The unusual design for Skybridge, by Ralph Johnson, of Perkins & Will, sought to avoid dropping a giant curtain of a building on the edge of the West Loop, a neighborhood of low-rise lofts. Instead, Johnson broke up the structure at 1 N Halsted St, which feels like three buildings in one, artfully connected by glass cutouts and a steel sculptural element (a bridge of sorts) that caps the 39-story tower like a giant overhanging trellis.

“We wanted to break the scale up into a series of communities or neighborhoods, like a hilltop village in the sky, so we have these kinds of erosions, both vertical and horizontal cuts, to scale the building down into communities,” Johnson said.

Those “erosions” are incredibly successful. A series of glass-enclosed walkways connect what look like two distinct towers and provide a transparent look at the life of the building and the skyline beyond it.

Breaking barriers

This breaking down of barriers between residences in a style of housing that’s often insular and the life of the city outside its walls is a theme in Johnson’s residential work, also on display in his stunning Contemporaine mid-rise, built by CMK Development in River North.

The large mass of the six-story base is a little imposing at Skybridge, but Johnson softened its street-level effect with a glass front for the ground-floor Dominick’s and checkered panes of blue glass that hide parking levels. Few residential developments receive the sort of glowing critical acclaim of Skybridge, which was named the city’s best new highrise by New Homes Magazine in 2004 and won a Distinguished Building Award from the American Institute of Architects in 2003, and still suffer lagging sales.

In May of 2004, Koenig & Strey GMAC Real Estate, which had recently taken over marketing of the project, quoted sales figures of around 60 percent. More than a year later, the two-year old Skybridge was reportedly near the 80 percent sold mark.

In December 2004, the developers found new financing and avoided foreclosure after construction loans came due. The building has 14 floor plans with one to three bedrooms and one to 2.5 baths. Standard features include Canac cabinets, Corian or granite counters, GE appliances, ceramic tile baths and Jacuzzi tubs. Prices on remaining units ranged from the $300s to the $850s in July 2005, and parking was priced from $30,000.

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