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What architecture style is the John Hancock center in Chicago?

Thank you. Is it post-modern? Or?

Public Comments

  1. It is considered structural expressionist style and was designed by Fazlur Khan of the famous architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.
  2. It is considered to be modern architecture, stripped of any ornamentation that might suggest allusion to any other period in time. The only ornamentation per se is the expression of its massive diagonal bracing. This and the Sears Tower are the masterpieces of Fazlur Khan and the firm Skidmore Owings and Merrill. The Hancock completed in 1969, the height of Mies van der Rohe's influence on American Architecture. It is definitely not post-modernism, which is a revolt against modernism and brutalism (brutalist style is best expressed by the older UIC Campus buildings, exposed concrete interiors). The revolt being the introduction of classical and historical elements into buildings to "humanize" them. One more famous example is Phillip Johnson's AT&T Building with its chippendale cabinet like top. Robert Venturi, Michael Graves, and Robert AM Stern are well known post-modern architects. One of the stronger examples of post modern architecture is the R R Donnely Building on the south side of the Chicago River by architect Ricardo Bofill, with its pedimented roof and the capitals on its vertical elements it looks like a Greek Temple skyscraper. See the first link below for a photo.
  3. The Hancock Bldg. is "Late Modernism" or "Structural Expressionism". Technically the style of the Hancock is a bridge between "Modernism" and "Post-Modernism". Structural Expressionist buildings reveal their structure on the outside as well as the inside, but with visual emphasis placed on the internal steel and/or concrete skeletal structure as opposed to exterior concrete walls.
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