Screw architecture, I'm going home

A real estate developer has just announced that they want to build a 120 story condo/hotel skyscraper in Chicago. That’s exactly what we need – more condos. Personally, I think the whole thing might be some sort of guerilla marketing for the developer’s other buildings. This is because the building itself is not only a huge phallic symbol (as all skyscrapers are, to one extent or another) but that it’s shaped like a giant screw. Let’s break down what they are trying to say with this design:

  1. “This is our way of screwing over everybody who bought a condo in Chicago in the last three years – ensuring nobody will be able to sell theirs for the next three while all these are on the market”
  2. “We just built the biggest terrorist target ever! So buy a condo here and you’re screwed!”
  3. “Who needs stairs? We turned the whole building into a tornado slide, capable of evacuating the entire building in 30 seconds as folks climb out their windows and corkscrew around the building to the ground.”
  4. “Auntie Em! Auntie Em! It’s a twister!” or, alternatively, “Designed to lure storm chasers downtown from the suburbs”

In the end, I hope that this project fails to actually happen. Sure, it would be neat to have the world’s largest building in Chicago again. But it’s not worth the hassle and not worth the fact that it’d no doubt hurt the resale value of my condo.

Comments

Unknown said…
Anything that saturates the downtown Chicago housing market drives down the price of the Wilco towers, putting them ever closer to my price range!
Anonymous said…
You have to admit that the Smurfitt-Stone building (across from Millenium- the one with the diamond shape with a slit down the middle featured in "Adventures in Babysitting") is quite vagina like in its shape- perhaps the world's greatest non-phallic building ever.
grrrbear said…
Hmmm...you know I'd never really considered the "vagina-ness" of the Smurfit-Stone building, but now that you mention it...

So it's a vagina mounted on top of a giant penis. That may be the most provocative piece of architecture in history. One wonders why the right-wingers haven't demanded it be levelled yet.