Architectural Boat Tour

Chicago Architectural Boat Tour

View form East coast of the Chicago Rive, 2013

October 02, 2013, after being here in Chicago for two and half year I got a change to do Architecture Boat Tour with my friends from an art class alone with our best teacher Ms. Gitte.  She is awesome and I think all of my friends and especially I am very happy to have her as a teacher and thankful to her for arranging this great opportunity for us.

All of my friends except me and Gitte, 2013

Chicago is a birthplace of Skyscraper and I am living in this prestigious city of the United State. Chicago is a land of tallest building in North America till the today's date. There are five tallest building above 1000 ft of height and we started our tour just in front of Trump Tower, second tallest skyscraper in Chicago.

Trump Tower, 2013

First Skyscraper of Chicago,
The Home Insurance Building, 1884.

Reflection on Trump Tower, 2013

Merina City Tower,2013
(Reinforced Concrete Method)

Merian City Tower

         We are twenty students and a teacher with some other travelers. I am so excited to start my boat tour and generate my knowledge about Chicago’s skyscraper or basically about architecture in Chicago. I have opportunity to see and understand what we learn in our textbook about architecture and the little bit of method of construction. Most of the skyscraper that build in second half of the 20^th century is based on steel-frame construction and also known as International style design, where it emphasized clean lines and geometric surface specially rectangular or square shape. These buildings and designs also fall in the post-modern architecture system. Some of the old building also made with the system called Balloon-Frame construction before Steel-Frame construction and some Cast-Iron construction. One of the famous building form  Chicago city was built by Reinforced Concrete method, which is known by Merina City Tower, stand by each other. Merina City Tower is also well known building that feature in many movies.

Ms. Gitte and John chatting and Branda in rear view

        

333 Wacker Drive, 2013
with reflection of buildings

Each and every single building have its own unique feature and characteristic showing in front of us. Even though, some of my favorite buildings are Aqua, 333 Wacker Drive, Chicago Board of Trade, and Tribune Tower. Aqua is so cool and give you a feeling of freshness of floating water from outside and every single layer is a balcony of the building. Another building 333 Wacker Drive is the building that you can appreciate when you are in boat tour. I like this building because of its round body and the reflection that we can see is just amazing. The Chicago Board of Trade building is best for me just because of its statue on the top of the building which stands 37 feet tall and the interesting thing is that it doesn’t’ have any face. The reason about not curving any face in the sculpture is unnecessary to do so. No one is going to see any details from the street level. Chicago Tribune Tower was able to won the title of wonderful building in the world in 1922 and main attraction of this building for me is fragments of more than 150 historical sites.  Every time I pass by this building, I need to stop and look at these fragments closely. I think it’s very artistic and entertaining both together. There are many other buildings that I appreciate and want to talk about.

Chicago is one of the very important cities for its architecture because it’s a birthplace of Skyscraper and many world famous buildings and also known as world’s first tallest building holder city. Chicago’s architecture showed new hope and excitement for builders and engineers and it’s always been inspiration for most of them. Chicago gave very first chance to build something new and different from other city after Chicago’s great fire. All this destruction gave new foundation to do or build new ideas. So, I think Chicago is very important from architectural perspective.  

Thank you for your precious time......................