Prairie School was the building style that was popular in the early 1900s in the Midwest. Architects like Frank Lloyd Wright designed houses and other structures with distinctive flat roofs and overhanging eaves, resulting in a minimalistic look that complemented its landscape.
Foster + Partners borrowed from that school of thought. Chicago’s newest Apple Store will have a large, flat roof and transparent walls, as Curbed Chicago and the Chicago Tribune report.
The 20,000-sf store will have two levels, with a street-level entrance and an underground sales area. Next to the building will be an outdoor staircase that leads to the riverwalk.
Visitors will get views of the adjacent Chicago River and the city’s many towers. The site is at the south end of Chicago’s popular Magnificent Mile shopping district.
Construction will begin in 2016. The store will replace a vacant food court.
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
Glass Wall Systems Open Up Closed Spaces
Sectioning off large open spaces without making everything feel closed off was the challenge faced by two very different projects—one an upscale food market in Napa Valley, the other a corporate office in Southern California. Movable glass wall systems proved to be the solution in both projects.
| Aug 11, 2010
CityCenter Takes Experience Design To New Heights
It's early June, in Las Vegas, which means it's very hot, and I am coming to the end of a hardhat tour of the $9.2 billion CityCenter development, a tour that began in the air-conditioned comfort of the project's immense sales center just off the famed Las Vegas Strip and ended on a rooftop overlooking the largest privately funded development in the U.
| Aug 11, 2010
The softer side of Sears
Built in 1928 as a shining Art Deco beacon for the upper Midwest, the Sears building in Minneapolis—with its 16-story central tower, department store, catalog center, and warehouse—served customers throughout the Twin Cities area for more than 65 years. But as nearby neighborhoods deteriorated and the catalog operation was shut down, by 1994 the once-grand structure was reduced to ...
| Aug 11, 2010
American Tobacco Project: Turning over a new leaf
As part of a major revitalization of downtown Durham, N.C., locally based Capitol Broadcasting Company decided to transform the American Tobacco Company's derelict 16-acre industrial plant, which symbolized the city for more than a century, into a lively and attractive mixed-use development. Although tearing down and rebuilding the property would have made more economic sense, the greater goal ...