Aqua Tower

Aqua is an 82-storey skyscraper in the Lakeshore East area of downtown Chicago, Illinois. It was designed by Jeanne Gang and her firm Studio Gang Architects, and finished in 2009. The tower is about 262 metres tall. Its most striking feature is its wavy white concrete balconies, which make the glass walls look like rippling water.

It is famous because it looks so different from the boxy towers around it. When it was completed it was the tallest building in the world designed by a woman, and it was the firm's first skyscraper. It won the Emporis Skyscraper Award as the best skyscraper of 2009.

Why do the balconies wave?

Gang stretched the balconies outward by as much as 3.7 metres so residents could see nearby landmarks. Because each floor slab has a slightly different shape, the front of the building seems to ripple, and from some angles it looks like hills and flat pools. She said she was inspired by the striped limestone outcrops that are common around the Great Lakes. The site used to be a rail yard beside the Chicago River and Lake Michigan.

What is inside?

Aqua mixes hotel rooms, rental apartments, condos and penthouses in one building, which was a first for downtown Chicago. Floors 1 to 18 hold 215 hotel rooms, floors 19 to 52 have 476 rental homes, and floors 53 to 81 have 263 condos. A big terrace on top of the base has gardens, pools, a running track and a fire pit. Each floor covers roughly 1,500 square metres.

On the globe

The toy model shows the tall tower with white balconies that change depth from floor to floor so the facade ripples.