Here’s hoping that 2024 greets you with a smile. Today, we present our latest artwork featuring Chicago’s John Hancock Center [officially renamed 875 North Michigan Avenue in 2018, but damn that's bland]. Details of the design are the source for our title of this piece. From the Chicago Architecture Center:
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill chose a bold form for the 875 N. Michigan Ave. The tapered rectangular tube—with giant trusses on each of the four sides—doesn’t hide how the building stands up. The X-bracing on the building's exterior enables it to resist wind loads. The lateral load-resisting system also reduces the need for internal columns, opening up the building’s interior and increasing available floor space.
Engineer Fazlur Khan's idea of the "trussed tube system" was an important stage in the development of the skyscraper. This design made it possible to build to unprecedented heights.
The piece is titled Torquere, from the Latin word meaning to "twist, wind, or wrap," from which the Old French trousser and trousse originated and gave us our modern word "truss."
