Aqua Tower
Skyscraper · Chicago, Illinois
Jeanne Gang's eighty-two-storey tower of 2009, whose balconies are all different shapes and project at different depths, so the facade reads as rippling water rather than a stack of floors. The shapes are not decorative — they are calculated to give each flat a view past its neighbours, and to break up the wind that would otherwise sheet down a tower this tall.
225 North Columbus Drive, Chicago, Illinois, 60601, United States
A private residential and hotel building. Viewed from the street and Lakeshore East Park at any hour. Hotel bar open to the public.