Hyatt Center
Encyclopedia
Hyatt Center is an office tower in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 completed in 2005. The 48 story skyscraper
Skyscraper
A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building of many stories, often designed for office and commercial use. There is no official definition or height above which a building may be classified as a skyscraper...

 stands at 679 feet (207 m) on 71 South Wacker Drive. It is owned by the Irvine Company
Irvine Company
The Irvine Company is a privately held real estate development company based in Newport Beach, Orange County, Southern California. The corporate center of the company lies in Newport Center. A large portion of its operations are centered in and around the City of Irvine, a planned city of 250,000...

.

Pei Cobb Freed & Partners
Pei Cobb Freed & Partners
Pei Cobb Freed & Partners is an architectural firm that was founded in 1955 by I. M. Pei as I. M. Pei & Associates, in 1966 called I. M. Pei & Partners, and received its current name and organization in 1989. The founders were I. M. Pei, Henry N. Cobb, and Eason H. Leonard. Pei and Leonard retired...

' striking elliptical steel and glass design is reminiscent of Tour EDF
Tour EDF
Tour EDF is an office skyscraper located in La Défense, the high-rise business district west of Paris, France.The tower was built for Électricité de France , France's main electricity company, and hosts company's offices. Tour EDF is 165 m tall, the tallest skyscraper built in La Défense since the...

, a skyscraper in Paris, France designed by the same firm.

The 1,765,000 square foot (164,000 m²) building contains 65,000 cubic yards (50,000 m³) of concrete
Concrete
Concrete is a composite construction material, composed of cement and other cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag cement, aggregate , water and chemical admixtures.The word concrete comes from the Latin word...

 and 12,000 tons of structural steel
Steel
Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...

. It took about 2,700 truckloads to excavate the building's foundation
Foundation (architecture)
A foundation is the lowest and supporting layer of a structure. Foundations are generally divided into two categories: shallow foundations and deep foundations.-Shallow foundations:...

, and 1,300,000 man hour
Man hour
A man-hour or person-hour is the amount of work performed by an average worker in one hour. It is used in written "estimates" for estimation of the total amount of uninterrupted labour required to perform a task. For example, researching and writing a college paper might require twenty man-hours...

s over nearly two years to finish. Twenty-eight high speed elevator
Elevator
An elevator is a type of vertical transport equipment that efficiently moves people or goods between floors of a building, vessel or other structures...

s serve Hyatt Center.

The building features extensive landscaping both inside and outside from bamboo
Bamboo
Bamboo is a group of perennial evergreens in the true grass family Poaceae, subfamily Bambusoideae, tribe Bambuseae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family....

 groves, complete with fountains, lining the modern lobby to lush green grass in raised curved stone planters on the building's south side. The Hyatt Center also contains art panels by Keith Tyson
Keith Tyson
Keith Tyson is a British artist. In 2002, he was the winner of the Turner Prize. His work is concerned with an interest in generative systems, and an embrace of the complexity and interconnectedness of existence...

 and a trompe l'oeil
Trompe l'oeil
Trompe-l'œil, which can also be spelled without the hyphen in English as trompe l'oeil, is an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects appear in three dimensions.-History in painting:Although the phrase has its origin in...

 mural by Ricci Albenda.

The anchor tenant of the building is Mayer Brown
Mayer Brown
Mayer Brown is an international law firm head-quartered in Chicago which specializes in commercial transactions and litigation. The firm employs more than 1,600 lawyers, including approximately 875 in the Americas, 425 in Europe and 300 in Asia....

 LLP, which occupies floors 32-45 and shares the floor 2 cafe with a few of the other tenants.

Previous concept

Originally, the Pritzker Realty Group intended for British architect Lord Norman Foster
Norman Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank
Norman Robert Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank, OM is a British architect whose company maintains an international design practice, Foster + Partners....

 to design what was then called Pritzker Tower to house the offices of the Global Hyatt Corporation and other family holdings. However, plans for the 60 story building were scrapped due to financial considerations & the uncertainty of global events after the terrorist attacks on 9/11.

Security

Being the first high rise built in Chicago post 9/11, Kroll Security Group, the Security Consulting and Engineering division of Kroll, Inc., was hired as the security consultant for the project providing complete security systems design.

See also

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