Headstand Media

333 West Wacker Drive is the downtown Chicago office building where Headstand Media is located. Construction on it started in 1979 and it was completed in 1983. This 36 story (487 foot) building is considered a design masterpiece and the first “post-modern” skyscraper in Chicago. It was designed by the New York architectural firm, Kohn Pedersen Fox, with Perkins & Will of Chicago.

Factoids:

• The base of the building features Vermont marble and granite
• The lot the building sits on has a triangle shape bordered by Franklin Street, Lake Street and Wacker Drive.
• In 1995 the building was voted “Favorite Building” by the readers of the Chicago Tribune
• In 1997, the building sold for an estimated $100,000,000
• Th building is located in the northwest corner of Chicago’s “Loop”, with its curved green glass curtain wall following the bend in the Chicago River.
• This popular design made Kohn Pederson Fox world famous and the foundation of their ongoing practice of designing tall buildings.
• The architects received an Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1984.
• “The Truman Show” film posters used an image of the curved wall to portray a giant television screen.
• From one end of the curve to the other, the building is exactly 301 feet wide.
• Artist Jim Dine was commissioned in 1985 by the Nuveen Company, a building tenant on the 33rd floor, to paint a 9 panel mural.
• There is a large bronze sculpture by Richard Hunt called “Organic Construction” in the office of the building.
• 333 West Wacker Dr. is located in between office towers designed by the same architects: 225 West Wacker and 191 North Wacker.
• The base of the building is serrated on the south and east sides, creating a major engineering problem since the design did not allow the columns to align flush at the edge of the building.
• Even though many call this building the first Post Modern skyscraper in Chicago, designer architect William Pedersen prefers the term contextual architecture referring to the technique of relating the design to the surroundings and thinking of buildings more like public sculpture than commercial architecture.
• The building was featured in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in 1986 where Ferris Bueller’s father had his offices.

I remember this building going up during my early years of working downtown for a small architectural design firm on North Franklin… one block south of this building. From that time forward, it has always been my favorite skyscraper in Chicago.

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