A sign on the proposed Salesforce tower? So what?
Let’s worry about things like design quality
river. The company’s wish list includes a sign atop the building, which would be a glassy version of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the art moderne centerpiece (and masterpiece) of New York’s Rockefeller Center. The architects, New Haven, Conn.-based Pelli Clarke Pelli, are working on the design for developer Hines and the site’s longtime owners, the Kennedy family.
In a perfect world, buildings would not need signs. Their architecture would distinguish them. Such is the case with iconic Chicago structures like 875 North Michigan Avenue (the former John Hancock Center). Its muscular Xbraces render any signage superfluous. But many companies want to write their names on the skyline. And when they’re proposing to bring thousands of jobs to Chicago, as Salesforce is, it’s hard to turn them down flat.
The pragmatic Emanuel has responded accordingly. In legislation introduced to the City Council Thursday, he proposes to let high-rise building signs — those at least 150 feet above the ground — get bigger, but not so big that they would overwhelm a building’s architecture or its environs, as the Trump sign does.
Along the river, the current rules cap high-rise signs to no more than 550 square feet. How big is that? Not very. Check out the unobtrusive sign near the top of the Loews hotel high-rise.
The revised standards would link a sign’s allowable size to its height above the ground, following the common sense notion that the higher a sign is, the larger it needs to be in order to be seen.
The potential Salesforce tower would be at least 800 feet tall. So under the proposed rules, the sign could be as large as 1,100 square feet — double the current limit. Sounds bad, right? It’s not. The sign near the summit of the Loop’s Chase Tower is about 1,100 square feet. It’s only 40 percent as big as the 2,891-square-foot Trump behemoth. And its visual impact is further lessened by its placement at the tower’s top.
In contrast, the Trump sign, thought to be downtown’s biggest, is only about 200 feet up from ground level. Its massive size and its placement explain why it’s “so in your face,” disrupting the elegant ensemble of buildings around the Michigan Avenue Bridge like an oaf invading an urbane dinner party.
A Salesforce sign won’t do that, and not only because it would be high in the air and relatively small. Because there are 10 letters in the company’s name, they’ll have to be even smaller than the ones at the five-letter Chase sign. And the sign can’t be crammed on the highly visible but narrow southern face of the Wolf Point tower. There’s not enough room. It would go instead on the broader east or west facades.
The city will continue to allow only one high-rise sign per building, and highrise signs will have to be placed directly below a building’s roof line.
The proposed ordinance thus promises to extend the goal of the original restrictions: Strike a balance by protecting the downtown riverwalk from overcommercialization while maintaining the right of property owners to promote their business. In short, mute the presence of signs without getting rid of them entirely.
Case closed? Hardly.
The downtown riverwalk, which lines the river’s south bank, is an urban design success because it contains a sequence of roomlike outdoor spaces that are choreographed and curated. There’s everything from a Chicago Vietnam Veterans Memorial to bars and restaurants. Yet they all work together, brought into a compelling whole by the enlivening contrast between the riverwalk’s modern design and classically inspired Wacker Drive and the way the pathway lets people get close to the water.
Yet previous renderings of the proposed Salesforce tower show little more than a generic fountain, tiered seating and a pathway on the river’s north bank.
That’s not much, especially for a project whose backers emphasized the selling point that their stiltlike towers would leave most of the site open. For the public spaces to come fully alive, they’ll need plenty of seating and food as well as features that rise above banal norms.
A mere plaque that evokes the site’s colorful history won’t do. Nor will a piece of sculpture plopped on the riverwalk. The trim tower, which has improved from bulbous early versions, should be as boldly sculptured and elegantly detailed as its model in Rockefeller Center. Its public spaces should engage the water and the views, as well as Chicago’s past and the future.
All that is more important than a sign.