Marina City
Chicago, Illinois
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Marina City, Chicago
Chicago's Marina City Celebrates 45 Years
 Marina
City, the landmark structure located along the Chicago River in
downtown Chicago, will celebrate its 45th birthday in 2009. Marina
City is a mixed-use building complex highlighted by twin, corncob-shaped
residential towers constructed of exposed reinforced concrete. When
completed in 1964, the twin towers were the both the tallest residential
buildings and the tallest reinforced concrete structures in the
world. The modern design of the towers is as unique today as when
they opened.
History
Architect Bertrand Goldberg, a student of Mies van der Rohe, designed
the Marina City complex in 1959. The construction cost was $36 million
and financed primarily by unions. The unions feared the flow of
people from the city to the suburbs in the 1960s would lead to a
decrease of city jobs. The concept of a residential “city
within a city” offers an alternative to moving to the surrounding
small towns. Considering the current trend for downtown residential
towers because of people moving from the suburbs and back into the
city, Marina City was ahead of its time. Living and working downtown
eliminates the need for daily commuting by car, an original marketing
slogan for the tower.
 Upon
completion, the complex was the biggest ever built with concrete.
James McHugh Construction Co., was the general contractor of Marina
City and the same contractor to later build Water Tower Place in
1976 and Trump Tower, Chicago in 2008, both of which represented
some of the tallest reinforced concrete structures in the world
at the time of their completion.
Over the years, minor fires have occurred; fortunately, Marina
City has not had any serious fires. This excellent record can be
attributed to the concrete construction and the “all electric”
building design.
Marina City is credited with being the first urban, post-war, high-rise
residential complex in the U.S. and is generally credited with starting
the residential renaissance of the inner cities. Marina City’s
mixed-use format of residential / office / retail with a parking
base is the model still used today for downtown developments.
Structure
 The
approximately 105-ft diameter, circular residential towers consist
of a 35-ft diameter, reinforced concrete, central core wall. The
core wall thickness varies from 30 inches at the base to 12 inches
at the top. The concrete core wall was built ahead of the reinforced
concrete floor in a manner similar to modern skyscrapers such as
Trump Tower, Chicago and the Burj Dubai Tower. The structural engineer
of record for Marina City was Severud Associates and the firm is
still in practice today. Material Service provided the ready-mixed
concrete.
The normalweight concrete supplied to the site had a maximum 28-day
compressive strength of 7,000 psi and was utilized for the vertical
load carrying system of the tower. The floor slabs and floor framing
beams were cast using a lightweight concrete mix. Construction of
the complex took approximately four years to complete. The ability
of concrete to easily form the petal shapes of the apartments is
one of the many reasons the engineer and architect selected reinforced
concrete.
The towers are supported on three concentric rings of piles constructed
by the Case Foundation Company. The inner ring supports the central
core and the two outer rings support the perimeter columns. The
complex’s end-bearing piles were drilled 115-ft into the earth
and the pile diameters varied from 24 to 66 inches. Mueser Rutledge
Consulting Engineers were the foundation engineers and Dr. Ralph
Peck, of the Illinois Institute of Technology, consulted on the
foundations.
Architecture
In 1961, architect Bertrand Goldberg stated, “the towers
will be like two trees, the central columns will house the elevators,
stairways, and utility lines. They will be the trunks in the tree
design.” The 16 reinforced concrete beams radiate from the
trunk as branches. Beyond the perimeter columns are 10-ft wide balconies
that fan out like leaves in Goldberg’s tree analogy.
 The
lower 19 floors of each tower form an exposed, spiral parking ramp
with 896 spaces per building. The residential floors are above the
parking. A special 360-degree view, open-air roof deck is on the
top story. Each residential unit is composed of triangular wedges
with the bathroom and kitchens near the core and the living spaces
along the perimeter. At the time of completion, the towers were
the world’s largest “all electric” building.
 At
the very base of the structure is the actual Marina for pleasure
craft. In addition to the towers’ 900 units, the complex also
houses commercial offices, a theatre, bowling alley, swimming pool,
skating rink, and a 1,200-seat auditorium.
Marina City was carefully conceived in terms of scale. The concrete
twin towers stand out as an intriguing geometric texture against
a carefully controlled and quiet composition of the background commercial
buildings.
Cultural Reference
The towers have been featured in several movies and TV shows including
The Bob Newhart Show, Blues Brothers, and Ferris Bueller’s
Day Off. In the movie, The Hunter, a car chase ends
with a car driving off an upper floor of the garage and splashing
into the Chicago River, this scene was later recreated for a 2006
Allstate commercial.
As a nod to the general belief that the towers’ architecture
is timeless, in the science-fiction movie I, Robot, which
is set in the future, the Marina City towers can be clearly seen
adjacent to the super ultra-tall tower serving as the robot corporate
headquarters.
Summary
 Marina
City truly represents the original “city within a city.”
The modern design of the towers is as unique today as when they
opened. The concrete structure has proven the test of time and represents
a durable, sustainable design even by today’s standards.
Play
a movie about the construction of Marina City produced by PCA
in 1965.
References
Paul Heyer (1966). Architects on Architecture: New Directions
in America. New York: Walker and Company.
Jay Pridmore, George Larson (2005). Chicago Architecture and
Design: Revised and expanded. New York: Harry Abrams, Inc.
Antonio Terranova (2003). Skyscrapers. White Star Publishers.
2008 photos by Larry Novak
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