Chicago’s architecture is famous throughout the world and one style is referred to as the Chicago School. The style is also known as Commercial style. In the history of architecture, the Chicago School was a school of architects active in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century. They were among the first to promote the new technologies of steel-frame construction in commercial buildings, and developed a spatial aesthetic which co-evolved with, and then came to influence, parallel developments in European Modernism. A "Second Chicago School" later emerged in the 1960s and 1970s which pioneered new structural systems such as the tube-frame structure.
While the term "Chicago School" is widely used to describe buildings in the city during the 1880s and 1890s, this term has been disputed by scholars, in particular in reaction to Carl Condit’s 1952 book The Chicago School of Architecture. Historians such as H. Allen Brooks, Winston Weisman and Daniel Bluestone have pointed out that the phrase suggests a unified set of aesthetic or conceptual precepts, when, in fact, Chicago buildings of the era displayed a wide variety of styles and techniques. Other scholars have noted that the phrase implies that Chicago was the only locus of technical or aesthetic innovation in skyscraper design, when in fact developments in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Cincinnati often paralleled or preceded similar work in Chicago. Contemporary publications used the phrase "Commercial Style" to describe the innovative tall buildings of the era rather than proposing any sort of unified "school".
In the 1960s, a "Second Chicago School" emerged, largely due to the ideas of structural engineer Fazlur Khan. He introduced a new structural system of framed tubes in skyscraper design and construction. The Bangladeshi engineer Fazlur Khan defined the framed tube structure as "a three dimensional space structure composed of three, four, or possibly more frames, braced frames, or shear walls, joined at or near their edges to form a vertical tube-like structural system capable of resisting lateral forces in any direction by cantilevering from the foundation." Closely spaced interconnected exterior columns form the tube. Horizontal loads, for example wind, are supported by the structure as a whole. About half the exterior surface is available for windows. Framed tubes allow fewer interior columns, and so create more usable floor space. Where larger openings like garage doors are required, the tube frame must be interrupted, with transfer girders used to maintain structural integrity.
Some of the more famous Chicago School buildings include:
- Auditorium Building
- Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building
- Reliance Building
- Gage Group Buildings
- Chicago Building
- Brooks Building
- Heyworth Building
- Leiter I Building
- Leiter II Building
- Marquette Building
- Monadnock Building
- Montauk Building
- Rookery Building
- Wainwright Building
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