150-storey Drill House.
The 150-storey residential building will resemble a drill in shape.
The project envisages that the height of the building will be 609 meters.
The name of the project is the «Chicago Spire». (Chicago Spire).
The building will house 1,200 apartments, and several floors of the skyscraper will be occupied by utility companies providing additional services to residents of the building.
The project also includes a 6-story parking lot for 1,350 cars.
It is planned that the skyscraper will be built by 2010, but its construction has not yet begun.
Plans to build the «Chicago Spire» were announced about two years ago.
During this time, the skyscraper's appearance has undergone a number of changes.
The most difficult of the unresolved issues remains financing.
The project will be officially presented to the city authorities in April.
Experts estimate the estimated cost of the project at 1.2 billion dollars.
However, the project developers have recently been of the opinion that this figure may be changed.
The architect hopes that the Chicago Spire will stand in line with other famous Chicago skyscrapers: the John Hancock Center (the third tallest building in Chicago; 344 m, 100 floors, built in 1969; together with the antennas on the roof, the height of the building reaches 457 m) and the Sears Tower (the Sears tower was built in 1974.
After the events of 9/11, it is the tallest building in the United States: 108 floors. Two antennas on the roof of the building bring the height of the building to 527 m).
According to the concept of Santiago Calatrava, the unusual shape of the building should resemble an imaginary column of smoke from a campfire made by Native Americans at the mouth of the Chicago River.
Each floor of the building is rotated two degrees relative to the floor below.
At the top, the cross-sectional area of the building tapering, and starting from the base, the skyscraper makes a 270-degree turn.
The previous version of the tower's design made a full 360-degree turn. The width of the floors has now increased by 35 feet.
This project is the third major attempt to build a skyscraper in Chicago that will surpass the Sears Tower, which is currently the tallest building in the United States.