Client: Sterling Bay

Location: Chicago, IL, United States

Completion date: 2015

Artwork budget: $38,970

Project Team

Architect

Hartshorne Plunkard Architects

Industry Resource

Skyline Design

Artist

Gary Roberts

Client

Sterling Bay

Overview

1K Fulton is a former cold storage facility in Chicago’s West Loop. Originally built in 1920, the structure was transformed by Chicago based developer Sterling Bay and Hartshorne Plunkard Architects into a cutting edge LEED Gold certified building offering 550,000 square feet of office and retail space.
Sterling Bay was searching for a partner to produce an ambitious glass feature wall for the lobby. They choose Skyline Design as the collaborator who could provide the type of brilliant color that would do justice to their project, an important homage to the building’s incredible backstory

Goals

Upon purchasing the building, Sterling Bay discovered that the antiquated refrigeration system had miraculously continued running for nearly 100 years, creating a spectacular ice-covered interior landscape. Serendipitously, Gary Roberts, who was working as night watchmen at 1K Fulton prior to construction, is an amateur photographer with an interest in ice photography. While on the job, he photographed the frozen formations and captured an integral part of the building’s history. “It was very fortunate,” says Regina Stilp of Sterling Bay. “We definitely wanted to preserve it and honor the ice in a prominent position in the lobby.”

The clarity and translucency of ice made glass the ideal material choice to properly convey the beauty of the original composition. Skyline Design was chosen for the unique ability to apply vivid, lifelike color to glass, using an environmentally friendly combination of etching and printing that ensures dynamic, quality graphic and photographic reproduction.

Process

The resulting design employed the AST I/Etch, four color printing process to apply the custom photography of the ice to 22 glass panels, each 36” wide by 72 ¼” high, mounted with standoffs on the wall. The translucency achieved through the AST I technique allowed the panels to be backlit with high efficiency LED lighting.
By printing the image directly onto the glass, Skyline Design was able to achieve the very intense color that the client desired.
As Chicago’s west loop continues to evolve, 1K Fulton has set an exceptional example of integrating contemporary technology into a historically important structure. Rather than replace the past, it is honored—a sentiment best illustrated in the collaboration with Skyline Design. The floor-to-ceiling glass panels in the lobby display a history that not only captures and preserves the past, but is also contemporary for the people who will continue to pass by the lobby everyday.

Additional Information

In their search for a Chicago home, Google desired the sort of authenticity they found in New York City in what was formerly New York’s Gansevoort market. The inviting contrast of high quality, historic architecture and cutting edge technology at 1K Fulton is a perfect match. Although almost a century of extreme temperature fluctuations required the brick envelope of the building to be discarded, the reinforced concrete skeleton underneath remains robust, in what could be seen as an analogy for the neighborhood as a whole. Despite major renovations, the predominant strength of the neighborhood—its location—remains vital to this day