Marina City
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Architect: Bertrand Goldberg Associates
Year Completed: 1967
Location: 300 N State Street, Chicago, Illinois
Style: Late Modern
Marina City, located on the North shore of the Chicago River, is one of Chicago's many unique architectural achievements. During a time that traditional Modernism emphasized right angles, Bertrand Goldberg designed these two towers. Like traditional Modernism, they are very regular in their design; however, the shape of the two towers are anything but rectangular.
Marina City was designed to be an all-inclusive place to live. In addition to apartments and parking, it also included office space, retail shops, a bowling alley, a swimming pool, a skating rink and a theater.
When the buildings were started in 1959, they were in response to suburban migration. The architect felt enough people who worked in the loop would prefer to live close to where they worked. Fortunately, the concept was successful.
The parking makes up the first eighteen floors of the towers. Above that are the apartments which are pie shaped. Each "pie piece" is about 8-feet wide near the core and about 21-feet wide at the balcony. The apartments vary in size from an efficiency, which is only one of these pie pieces, to a two-bedroom which is two and a half pie pieces. The apartments are reputed to have a very open feel and have a good view of the city.
The towers have a central core that supports each floor. Rather than being supported by steel, the towers are supported by reinforced concrete. At the time the towers were completed, they were the world's tallest reinforced concrete structures.