Cordogan, Clark & Associates’ design for new Riverfront architecture celebrates Chicago’s rich architectural heritage, yet looks forward to the new millennium. Contemporary design and construction techniques combine with aesthetic “placemaking” to bring revitalizing energy to the Chicago riverfront. The architecture is conceived to create human-scaled and pedestrian-friendly areas, on both sides of the storefronts. Treescaping and landscaping combine with “humanscaping” to create a varied and pleasant walking, retail, and living environment. Varicolored paving with integral planters and illumination highlight individual riverwalk zones and storefronts. Illuminated limestone and granite bollards with guardrails compatible with the classical architecture of the riverwalk infrastructure are designed to meet current codes and provide child protection along the riverfront. Public fountains highlight key points along the riverfront as they enhance the riverwalk identity.

The specific detailing of the Riverwalk architecture varies from block to block and from district to district. It is enlivened with bays, alternate detailing, lighting, fenestration, planting, landscaping and hardscaping, and signage. In the Riverwalk Gateway district near Michigan Avenue, the architectural design is distinctively neoclassical, to complement this more traditional and elegant retail setting. Heading west along the river, the Riverwalk Village architecture is enlivened with pedestrian-friendly elements and expressive commercial and residential elements. West of Wells Street, the Nightlife District’s Sports Bar Pavilion blends the arcaded form of the riverwalk infrastructure with contemporary building design to create a setting that appears nautical. The goal of this riverwalk architecture, from Michigan Avenue west to Franklin, is to create an expressive, pedestrian-friendly and vibrant setting for retail and residential activity that celebrates and enriches everyday life.

Riverwalk Gateway
The Riverwalk Gateway is the riverfront retail district directly west of Michigan Avenue, extending to State Street. Between Michigan and Wabash, the riverfront architecture has recently been very carefully reworked. Here the new architecture works within the framework provided by this elegant neoclassical setting.

Riverwalk Village
The Riverwalk Village continues the retail activity that Riverwalk Gateway begins, blending it with residential activity to create a mixed-use environment. The goal of bringing ongoing yearlong life to the riverwalk is furthered by incorporating residential with retail uses. Here the landscape and humanscape becomes more intimately scaled: Pedestrians and shoppers are rewarded for walking along the riverfront by the warm and richly articulated architectural setting.

Storefronts infilled with green-tinted low-e glazing, accented with gold and silver highlights, create a lively window wall while providing generous natural light and views to and from these pavilions. Nighttime illumination from these pavilions, projecting through the steel filigree, as well as from sconces carefully integrated in the stone detailing, will create a bright, festive, welcoming presence along the riverfront.

The design of these Pavilions is progressive and heralds a new era of lighter, more refined, sustainable architecture. But most importantly it creates a warm, attractive, human-scaled environment that expresses and enlivens this unique riverfront setting and makes it a place that people will want to be.

Nightlife District
Heading west along the riverfront, west of the LaSalle Street Bridge, the architectural design becomes more expressive of the river’s rich maritime history. The design of the Sports Bar in the Nightlife district is conceived as a luminous tensile structure supported with masts, structural steel arches, and high-strength cables. Here, as in nautical design, the structural components—poles, cables, struts, roof and wall surfaces, are visible both from outside and inside in a composition that derives its aesthetic beauty from construction logic which brings it a sculptural quality. The Pavilion form radiates from a central structural cylinder, which also provides vertical access to street level above.

This stretch of the river, anchored by the elegant 333 Wacker Drive building, is among the most beautiful in the city. But its riverfront potential is undeveloped. The Sports Bar Pavilion will enhance this area from the street level down. It will serve as a beacon to bring nightlife activity to this underdeveloped segment of the riverfront. At night, the internally illuminated Pavilion will warmly glow like a multi-faceted crown on Chicago’s riverfront.