Architecture Tour River Cruise

On Tuesday, our main event of the day involved a river cruise by the Chicago Architecture Foundation. If you are going to take a boat tour while visiting Chicago (which you should) this is the one to take! A company called Shoreline runs another architecture boat tour, but don’t be fooled by that! You want the one by the Chicago Architecture Foundation. The big advantage to these tours is your guide is a volunteer docent trained by the Chicago Architecture Foundation. They are not in this for the money (because they don’t get paid), but because they just genuinely love to talk about the architecture and history of Chicago. We talked to a former docent (who happened to be leading our walking tour we took later in the week), and she told us to become a docent, she had to attend trainings every Saturday for six months. We were given a lot of information, so it was difficult for me to remember it all, but I felt like I learned a lot.

Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower), an example of bundled-tube construction

333 West Wacker (the shiny, curved building) is an example of how the architects use context in their design (in this case, the river was the inspiration).

The design of this building allows for more corner offices.

In this picture, you can see the Trump International Hotel (the shiny building on the left) and also the Chicago Tribune building. The Trump building was a bit controversial here, but it is nevertheless a beautiful building and complements the surrounding architecture well.

Clearly, this is just a small sample of what we saw and learned on our tour. I’m sure the architects in my family would go into far more detail, but that’s clearly not my area of expertise. Just take the tour yourself, and you’ll learn more!