"Situated on prestigious North Michigan Avenue, the one-hundred-story, multi-use tower tapers from bottom to top in order to accommodate the different floor space requirements of a variety of uses. Commercial spaces occupy the base of the tower while parking, office, and residential zones rise above. The tapered form provides structural as well as space efficiency. The exterior columns and spandrel beams, together with the diagonal members and structural floors, create the steel tube. The diagonals, spandrels and columns are clearly articulated to depict the primary elements of this tube. Less than thirty pounds of steel per square foot of floor area were used in the building, equaling that of a forty- to fifty-story traditional tower. The exterior cladding is black anodized aluminum with tinted bronze glass."

— from Bruce Graham. Bruce Graham of SOM. p46.

The Creator's Words

"The design of the John Hancock Center, in Chicago, was influenced by its unique site. Just off Lake Shore Drive, it is surrounded by huge, residential high-rise buildings and yet faces one of the city's most attractive commercial streets. John Hancock insisted on producing a tall building with residences above, offices and commercial uses below. The search for a new kind of structure which would accommodate multiple uses and also express the scale and grandeur of a one-hundred-story tower, lead Dr. Kahn and me to the diagonal tube. It was as essential to us to expose the structure of this mammoth as it is to perceive the structure of the Eiffel Tower, for Chicago, honesty of structure has become a tradition."

— Bruce Graham. from Bruce Graham. Bruce Graham of SOM. p46.

Details

100 story steel structure tower, 344 meters tall.
Floors 1-5 commercial, 6-12 parking, 13-41 office, 44-92 apartment, 93-100 television, observatory, restaurant, mechanical

American Institute of Architects 25 Year Award, 1999