Architecture
Designed by Adrian D. Smith of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the Franklin Center, is one of the most famous and recognized buildings in Chicago. The building's form features setbacks at the 15th, 30th and 45th floors. Designed in the postmodern architectural style, it is a granite-clad steel-framed building resting on pile foundations. The structure is characterized by strong vertical lines, spiked roof pinnacles, granite cladding and setbacks. The granite is a deep red color at the base, but changes shade to rose-beige at the top. Above the 5th floor, the lighter rose-beige granite is protected by silk-screened aluminum panels. The building relies on Gothic detailing to showcase verticality. The building's verticality evokes images of 1920s buildings, and the sturdiness of the structure is reminiscent of the Chicago Board of Trade Building. In addition to its design, the building relies on its location at the farthest corner from the Willis Tower to set it apart.
Read more about this topic: Franklin Center (Chicago)
Famous quotes containing the word architecture:
“The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem,—a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)