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Case in point: the August 25 cover story about architects Loebl Schlossman & Hackl. In it one of their major works, Water Tower Place, is cited as a great and groundbreaking success, superior even to recent imitators like 900 North Michigan because of its interior design. Credit is given specifically to the “dazzling atrium” with its planting, cascades, and anti-perspective escalators, which lures customers past its ground-floor-hogging anchor tenants up into the mall itself. “The circulatory system,” says LS&H president Donald Hackl, “is designed to push people past every one of the shops.”
Warren and Robert developed the unusual shape of the interior atrium, in which Loebl Schlossman Bennett and Dart had asked for one of those Hyatt Regency patented feature elevators, with Jules Vernesque glass cabs zipping up and down. We persuaded them to build a glass shaft for the elevators, to provide a powerful sculptural element. The stepped and bracket-decorated edges we designed for the openings between floors scandalized the orthodox local architects but helped relate the scale of the place to its human inhabitants. It also added a richness of detail of the sort that abounded in the Rome of Ligorio but had been banished from the Chicago of Mies van der Rohe.
