Architecture: Marina City- The first circular apartment buildings in history.

Old postcard from Chicago

One of the most iconic towers in the skyline of Chicago is the Marina City complex. I was very lucky to have a friend who lived there last year,so I had the chance to take this tour in person. What I really like about this building is that you can see how it looks by watching the tower next to you.

Views from the rooftop.

John Hancock Tower in the back left.

Marina City is a 65-story mixed use residential and commercial building. Built between 1960 and 1967 at a time when Chicagoans were fleeing to the suburbs, the hugely ambitious project was Goldberg’s collaborative attempt at urban revitalization, as he called it, “a city within a city.”

The building complex, with its iconic corn cob towers, has identical floor plans.  It was designed as a self-contained town, full of residential and commercial units. Marina City was part of an effort to reintroduce downtown Chicago as an attractive place to live. It is actually a complex of five structures: two residential towers (65 stories each, with the first 18 stories reserved for parking), an office building (10 stories), and a theatre building all standing upon a large commercial platform. Its total height is 587 feet (179m).

Chicago Daily News Image

Each tower contains more than four hundred apartments and a continuous, upward-spiralling ramp of parking spaces. The circle gave the highest ratio of usable floor space to exterior skin. Marina City is notable in that it is the first building in the United States to be constructed with tower cranes.
The structure is composed by a central reinforced concrete core (where the elevators are) and a radial disposure of the beams. This is very symbolic because to Goldberg, this point of union was exactly where the core structure was: with the elevators, the meeting point.

Floor Plan

This is the symmetrical unit type where my friend lived.

Views of the corridor.

Views of the living/dining/bedroom.

Every amenity imaginable could be found within – such as a swimming pool, gym, ice skating rink, bank, barbershop and even a grocery store. The first of its kind, it truly was a city within a city.

Views from the balcony of his unit.
Watching the sunset.

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This last amazing pictures are his own. Find out more about living in Marina City at Nathan Choe’s Blog.

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Some interesting videos about Marina City:
This is Marina City (Part 1/2)
This is Marina City (Part 2/2)
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