Located in the Loop and east of the South Branch Chicago River, this apron-like plaza frames a 52-story office tower in the block defined by North Wacker Drive, West Calhoun Place, North Franklin, and West Madison Streets. For its 2002 design, landscape architect Peter Walker of PWP Landscape Architecture, employed a minimalist vocabulary, deploying circular motifs throughout. Intended to be viewed from West Madison’s glazed, block-long lobby, the plaza accommodates fluid pedestrian movement, while providing opportunities for relaxation. Walker originally intended square, granite cobbles to carpet the interior and exterior ground plane, but only the latter was realized. A single row of regularly spaced circular benches planted with trees parallels West Madison and North Franklin Streets.
Circular motifs visually tie the plaza to the building, which is supported by metal-faced circular piers. Unable to install conventional tree wells along the building’s southern façade because of subterranean vaults, Walker designed above-grade, hemispherical armatures to protect individual maple trees and ground cover. Underplanted with sedum and encircled by polished stone benches, ten such armatures are spaced 30 feet apart along a gentle, downward slope.
At the plaza’s eastern edge are three circular stone benches, each of which surround a water basin ringed by eight bald cypress trees and embellished with a central, halved hemisphere planted with pachysandra. These hemispheres, when reflected in their respective basins, appear as full spheres. The water basins subtlety flows into a narrow circular channel, encompassed by flowering herbaceous underplantings. Two smaller circular benches, each holding a maple specimen, anchor the plaza’s northeast corner.
The project received an Honor Award in Design from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) in 2007.
