Quick Points

• Boutique architectural precast apartment building in thriving Chicago cultural district
• Cut stone quality and pigmented precast buck the “sameness” of cast-in-place towers
• Pigmented precast panels conceal parking; glazed windows enliven nighttime image
• “Old World” thin brick veneer eases transition to adjacent historic building
• LEED Silver Certification

Contents

Background
Classical Precast Facade Sets the Pace in Chicago's River North

Design
Designing “homey and chic” with precast

Aesthetics
Pigmented precast and “Old World” thin brick

Challenges
Precast erection on a tight urban site

Classical Precast Facade Sets the Pace in River North

Where you live can say as much about you as what you do. For those with a lot to say there is the Flair Tower, a new 26-story architectural precast apartment building in Chicago’s River North neighborhood. Designed with the area’s young urban professionals in mind, rentals for the apartments have kept pace with phased openings since spring 2010 despite a slow economy and stiff local competition. With its unique location the $55 million building offers scintillating vistas of the city’s impressive skyline.

The project is located at 222 W. Erie on the corner of Franklin beside Chicago’s elevated train tracks. Two historically significant buildings are neighbors to the project's tight urban site: the six-story mixed-use Huron Lofts, with 100 residential units, to the north; and Flair House, a three-story brownstone built in 1883, to the east. Flair House has been occupied since 1965 by Flair Communications Agency Inc. and its founder, Lee Flaherty, who sold the development site to Flair Tower owner McCaffrey Interests, Inc.

The Flair Tower was designed by Chicago-based Antunovich Associates, an architecture and design firm that prefers pigmented precast for the detailing and character it can accomplish. The project features 198 luxury apartment rentals, 9,500 sq. ft. of first-floor retail and a 210-space parking structure concealed within the second through sixth floors. The project replaces a surface parking lot. The building design team completed submittals for LEED Silver Certification with 35 points; certification is expected later this year. The solid precast walls contributed toward four of the points, including:

• SSc7.1 Heat Island Effect, Non-Roof
• MRc4.1 Recycled Content, 10% (post-consumer + ½ pre-consumer)
• MRc5.1 Regional Materials, 10% Extracted, Processed & Manufactured Regionally
• MRc5.2 Regional Materials, 20% Extracted, Processed & Manufactured Regionally

Designing “Homey and Chic” with Precast

Over the past decade cast-in-place residential towers have become a structure of choice in Chicago. Many have similar proportions, similar formwork, and similar buff and tan colors. The sameness has caused a reaction in the design community. Some developers have even tried to bring in more steel and glass to relieve the monotony.

In designing Flair Tower, Antunovich drew on the virtually unlimited palette of pigmented precast to create a fresh an exciting concrete facade that defies the previous cast-in-place conformity. Recognizing that in dense urban areas the first 60’ of a building’s elevation are the most important, Antunovich’s Greg Gorski chose pigmented precast panels to distinguish the building design and establish a strong street presence. He determined that the tower could minimize concrete and celebrate glass to augment the neighborhood and skyline views that are key selling points.

Owner McCaffrey Interests, Inc., wanted to complement yet enhance the feel of the culturally rich neighborhood. Taking design inspiration from limestone buildings on nearby Michigan Avenue, Gorski used detailing sympathetic to Flair House to break down the vertical and horizontal scale. Gorski is the designer of the structurally comparable Bernardin, at Chicago and Wabash, a building design which also features a precast-faced base. “We wanted [Flair Tower] to be approachable,” says Gorski. “This is an old manufacturing district where an overabundance of dark brick makes for very heavy and dated streetscapes. We decided to give the impression of a light colored cut stone to make the building design both elegant and inviting.”

The building’s cut stone masonry appearance is presented in classical proportions on a humanistic scale. White solid load-bearing precast panels finished with a light acid etch form the highly visible west, south and east sides of the facade, completely concealing the sloped ramps of the garage behind. Reveals building in to the precast forms created the impression of cut stone. The panels were embellished with layers of banding and projections that pushed the limits of the standard 9-1/2”-thick panel forms. Reveals 3/8” in depth provided the look of block-cut limestone and successfully camouflaged the precast panel joints.

Pigmented Precast and “Old World” Thin Brick

To convey a crisp residential feel, dark gray field-applied polished granite cut stone was installed into recesses in the bases of white pilasters, which were topped with details emulating column capitals. The gray granite was also incorporated into the storefront windows, above which pairs of windows were outlined in gray concrete color. Lintels and sills frame out the windows of the three parking levels that are glazed with a semi-translucent laminated glass that acknowledges the floor-to-floor curtainwall of the modern tower above and permits the garage lighting to create a lively facade at night. Backs of the float finish panels were painted white to increase reflectivity and visibility within the garage.

The sixth floor received short panels of gray pigmented precast with white medallions. This was an essential cue that warmed the otherwise classical cut stone edifice, signaling “home” to occupants and visitors and also distinguishing the base from the tower. A cornice decorated with a wide-space dentil molding completed the elevation. The cornice was echoed at the top of the painted cast-in-place concrete tower in gray on the east and west sides, in white on the north and south, then again in white on the penthouse floor.

First floor retail space is separated from the building’s influential neighbor to the east by a thin brick veneer facade. A blend of brown, red and burnt orange veneer imported from Germany provided a hand-laid, Old World look to the running bond pattern; High Concrete Group took special care to ensure the precast concrete “grout” color created an age-appropriate backdrop. Brick quoins were added to the corners to pay homage to the Flair House next door.

Tube framing on the east side accommodated the precast panels, and continued above the roof to support the large cornice. Beyond the cornice a green roof tops the parking deck that includes a pool, Jacuzzi and trellis surrounded by lush trees, shrubs and other plantings.

Precast Erection on a Tight Urban Site

On the west side of the apartment building the Chicago elevated railway runs over Franklin St. just 12’ from the Flair House facade. This tight spacing made it difficult to get the crane in place to lift the precast panels on west elevation. During the week the west elevation panels were erected, CTA employees remained on the tracks guiding train traffic to ensure passenger safety.

On the east side was the Flair House, a functioning business which had to be evacuated for several days as cranes moved thin brick-clad precast panels into place.