{Chicago’s Finest}
slmagchicago.com
Jan/Feb 2020
Condominium living room at One Bennett Park, the first Robert A.M. Stern Architects designed tower in Chicago.
A GRACIOUS LIFESTYLE One Bennett Park updates Chicago’s skyline and way of life By David Himmel / Photography by Anthony Tahlier If you’ve driven Lake Shore Drive north of the river, you’ve seen it. Located in Chicago’s most glamorous neighborhood, Streeterville’s One Bennett Park reaches 836 feet, towering over the surrounding mostly 300-foot tall buildings. But like some modern design, it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb, but rather an excitable thumbs up. It is a focal point for the neighborhood. A landmark for boaters on Lake Michigan and drivers on LSD and pedestrians walking their dogs. Its yard, a two-acre public park, is a beacon for all Chicagoans in search of Illinois nature where they can play, rest and unwind. One Bennett Park is that rare thing. That thing that can be everything to everyone. It offers renters, owners, singles, young families and empty nesters a lifestyle rich with amenities and careful attention to the artistry of everyday Chicago living. A building that is timeless by design with a park created to change with the seasons, One Bennett Park gives the feeling that it can only exist at this time, at this place. Building Chicago tradition All things, be they buildings, parks, computers or shoes must consider form and function. Too often, one takes precedence over the other, leading to lackluster results. Not so at One Bennett Park. “The best residential buildings consider both at the same time. And that’s the challenge,” says Dan Lobitz, project architect and partner at Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA), the firm at the helm of One Bennett Park. “You really have to work back and forth. The inside and outside working in concert … It’s really like a dance.” 74 slmag.net
Related Midwest is the developer behind the project. Ann Thompson, its senior vice president of architecture and design, says, “We wanted to reset what luxury means in this market and create a focal point, so there was only one choice [of architect]. They really understand what urban living is.” This is not the first project Related Midwest has worked on with RAMSA, but it is their first ultra-luxury residential high-rise collaboration in Chicago. Every single step of this dance was imagined, considered, reimagined, reconsidered. “The design process was really gratifying,” Lobitz says. “An important part of this was having a client that’s sophisticated and is a willing partner, working in concert and evaluating our suggestions and coming up with ways for improvement.” It began by RAMSA looking back at some of the great Chicago skyscrapers of the early part of the 20th century: Tribune Tower, the Chicago Board of Trade, the Palmolive Building. “These are all setback towers,” Lobitz says. “We thought carefully about what this building would be like on the skyline. We worked very hard to make the building an ornament on the skyline, and create a wonderful ambience for passersby.” Thompson, a lifelong Chicagoan, says that when she sees the building, it reminds her of her city’s great legacy of architecture. “Not only who we have been but who we aspire to be. The richness of the building, the attention to detail. It’s a celebration of the past and a look toward the future.”
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The simplicity of nature’s grandeur One Bennett Park is not just another beautiful building dotting a beautiful skyline. At its foot sits Bennett Park. The site, Thompson says, was part of a much larger planned development. Other sites had been developed, but this particular one remained vacant. Other developers, it seemed, didn’t know what to make of a geometric area with tree groves that had evolved into a giant, unofficial dog park. Midwest Related considered the city’s other great parks such as Maggie Daley, Millennium and Lincoln, and realized that Streeterville was lacking its own Chicago-style green space. It enlisted Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA)— the landscape architecture firm behind Maggie Daley Park, The 606 and the forthcoming Obama Presidential Center, and the American Society of Landscape Architects’ Firm of the Year in 2016—to give the building an equally enthralling yard. Its design and accessibility enriches the neighborhood. MVVA worked with RAMSA to be the soft, organic counterpoint to the limestone 76 slmag.net
building so that both the park and building’s architecture work in harmony. From the large, framed windows of the building, one can see the park’s focal feature, the Central Lawn Bowl with seasonal landscaping and plenty of space for gatherings of all sorts. The Children’s Play Bowl is ornamented with a large sandbox with bridges, slides, a timber climbing forest and off-path trails that lead to imaginative adventures. The Shady Grove offers respite from glaring sunshine-filled days. And not forgetting our furry friends, Bennett Park also provides two dog runs—one for the big dogs, one for the smaller pups. If there’s a theme to Bennett Park, it’s nature. Its materials are simple, its flora are seasonal, its visitors are families, professionals, singles, retirees, tourists, anyone who could ever enjoy the simple beauty that downtime in a public park can bring. Like the building that stretches above it, it feels innovative and classic at the same time.
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Grace to call home “We wanted to do a building that will appeal to people their whole life,” Lobitz says. “You can bring up a family and when [the kids] move out, you can convert their rooms to a study, library or private gym. The layouts are designed to have that flexibility.” “The convenience of the building is hard to meet,” Thompson says. Developing One Bennett Park was her job, but she herself will soon be calling One Bennett Park home. With one kid in college and another graduating in just over a year, she has listed her singlefamily home in Roscoe Village. “I love the city. I’m never going to leave Chicago. This building symbolizes the best of the city for me.
It’s a gracious lifestyle.” What’s more is that it’s her teenage daughter really pushing for the move. “She says, ‘Mom, you have to live here. This place is incredible!’” They set out to build something that grows out of the great tradition of Chicago architecture while making its own statement. The architects, the developer, the masons, the millworkers, the landscapers, the artists. It was a bold undertaking. But if you take that drive along Lake Shore Drive or sail along the harbors or duck into the park for a shady respite, you’ll see that they’ve done just that. sl onebennettpark.com slmag.net
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