Chicago
Cosentini Lighting Design

Cosentini Lighting Design bathes the base of Chicago’s 111 South Wacker office tower with subtle light

By Leanne French

	Photo © James@SteinkampPhotography.com

For the street-level identity of a new 52-story office tower at the corner of 111 South Wacker Drive in downtown Chicago, architect Goettsch Partners (formerly Lohan Caprile Goettsch) and its client, real estate developer The John Buck Company, envisioned an open lobby with a tour-de-force, translucent design. This concept translated into a curved, cable-supported glass facade that allows passersby to see into the lobby, which is framed by 50-foot-tall core walls clad in white Italian marble. Columns placed 80 feet apart visually open the space and draw the eye to radial patterns repeated from the stone flooring to a stepped ceiling that cleverly turns the underside of a parking garage ramp into a sculptural element. Illumination by Cosentini Lighting Design is seamlessly integrated into the architecture to enhance the lobby’s visual presence throughout the day, from early morning to after hours when the city sleeps.

The design team and developer began the 111 South Wacker project after completing another office high-rise, the UBS Tower, a block away on North Wacker Drive. This latest building comprises 1.4 million square feet, with each floor designed to be entirely free of interior columns. The structure’s center core accommodates a 50-foot lease span east and west of the core, and a 60-foot span to the north and south. The layout maximizes exterior views of the city skyline and interior daylighting.

At street level, the building appears open and spacious, yet the footprint of the upper floors occupies almost the entire site. The design team accomplished this by diagonally transferring the 40-foot column spacing as it passes through the parking garage levels to 80-foot column spacing at grade. The column transfer is visually expressed on the facade of the parking levels.

For the lobby, principal design architect James Goettsch and principal lighting designer Stephen Margulies concentrated on the illumination of the white Carrara marble-clad core elements, which are contrasted by a wall of red Rossa Verona enclosing the lobby on two sides. “Everything really works off of the intensity and effect of the white surfaces,” says Margulies. “The architect’s concept was to simulate a skylight that would approximate daylight and bathe the interior planes.” Affirms Goettsch partner Steven Nilles, “It was crucial to light the core uniformly. That is hard to do with walls that are that high.”

Instead of opting for a luminous glass ceiling, which raised maintenance concerns, Margulies suggested indirect fluorescent lighting as a solution. Dimmable T5 strip lights are concealed within aluminum profiles in a small, open, extruded-grid system, allowing light to bounce off of the Sheetrock ceiling above.

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the People Architect Goettsch Partners 224 South Michigan Avenue, Floor 17 Chicago, IL 60604 312.356.0600 phone 312.356.0601 fax www.gpchicago.com/users/folder.asp Design Partner: James Goettsch, FAIA Partner-in-Charge: Steven M. Nilles, AIA, LEED AP Senior Project Architect: Joseph Cliggott, AIA, LEED AP Design Team: Vince Caporale , E. Aaron Greven, AIA, Ming-Chih Lai, AIA , Ryan Moody, Martin Salas, Scott Seyer, AIA, Joseph Schultz, LEED AP  All are registered architects except Vince Caporale and Ryan Moody Lighting designer: Cosentini Lighting www.cosentini.com/web/cld_ web/cld_index_temp.html Lighting project team: Stephen Margulies, Principal Fernando Soler, project designer General contractor: Bovis Lend Lease www.bovislendlease.com Electrical contractor: Gibson Electric (Electrical Design-Build) www.gibsonelec.com/ Consultants Magnusson Klemencic Associates (Structural) Hill Mechanical Group (HVAC Design-Build) www.hillmech.com Great Lakes (Plumbing & Fire Protection Design-Build) Shiner + Associates (Acoustica) www.shineracoustics.com/ Mero Structures (Cable Wall Design Build) www.mero.com Photographer James@SteinkampPhotography.com 312.421.1233

the Products Lighting Interior ambient lighting: Bartco Lighting www.bartcolighting.com LSI www.lsi-industries.com/ Downlights: Kurt Versen www.kurtversen.com Task lighting: LSI www.lsi-industries.com Controls: Lutron www.lutron.com Glazing Glass: Viracon www.viracon.com Schott www.schott.com