User:Flopez4/Aqua Tower

Adding to Design section
The location of the tower was built on was a former rail yard that is adjacent to the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. The tower is a late project for the repurposing of the site from industrial to commercial and residential use. Studio Gang provided balcony views for tenants from the best view available on each section of each side thanks to the usage of reinforced concrete construction technology that extended floor plates beyond the nominal perimeter of the tower.

Curve Balconies
Jeanne Gang was a young rising architect when she and Studio Gang (her firm) took on the project. With the training Jeanne had received during school, Jeanne began with her design that would included balconies extending 2-12 feet outwards. Jeanne was inspired for this design from the topography layered limestone outcropping along the Great Lakes. The balconies are 9 inches thick and get thinner as they extend outwards to help with drainage. James Loewenberg helped SGA by finding an efficient way of creating the concrete balconies. He found that having an edge-form steel plate would guide the pour and once it was done drying it could be snapped back into a straight plane and reused for different curves on the other balconies. This method did leave the balconies without thermal breaks which caused criticism as it would cause a loss of heat during winters due to radiator effect. (6) A function of the curve balconies is that they protect the building from harsh winds which happens to be one of the most difficult challenges in skyscraper engineering.

Sustainability
Make its own section. The waste from the construction of the tower was 16% with the 84% going to recycling centers instead of landfills. Many eco-friendly features were offered to the residents of the establishment. These features included bamboo flooring which was better to produced that hardwood, Greenguard certified HanStone Quartz countertops and plumbing fixtures that would reduce the number of gallons per flow for water conservation.