They say imitation is the highest form of flattery. The gothic has many references on American soil. Here we find it embodied in a particular circumstance of a Medieval Watchtower. The Classical, even more so, embodied in the great many conditions of Neoclassical architecture across this and almost every other city in the United States. And lastly the industrial, undiscussable protagonist, ubiquitous across any city fabric, it is an omnivorous force, yet nevertheless beautiful in its scale and pragmatic form. We asked the question, how could one be all three, gothic, classical and industrial?

As an image, the Watch Tower presents a gridded, structurally rational composition on all four of its facades, borrowing iconographic elements from the Gothic watchtower, seen in its contextual periphery, as well the figurative window tropes of the Neoclassical and its promise of plenitude as a civic palazzo for all contemporary urban needs. In this way, the watch tower becomes an architecture of recapitulation, a building as a short lesson of the evolution of architectural history. But beyond image, the project surpasses the mere object, and we must inevitably link it to a rethinking of the city; could we suggest of a new kind of architecture which carries with it the intellect and iconography of allowing us to waver between all the elements that define a city?

In its civic stance, the building steps back from the street in order to create a plaza for residents and pedestrians, an inviting public space that uses the building as a kind of flattened patterned wall in front of which civic drama can play out. The brick red pigmented concrete borrows from the familiar imagery of Chicago architecture, particularly warehouse and residential architecture, but gives it a new plasticity, afforded by the material. On the inside, the program starts off in the base with a series of publicly accessible floors. A series of grand shops and office spaces dominate the podium. But in the contemporary city, wherever there is production, there must also be reproduction. Apartments occupy the upper block, with a serene yet industrial essence of repetitive interior vaults, the type synonymous with brick industrial vaulting. We embrace the making of city through the challenge of stylistic reconciliation. In all, the building stands as a promise and possibility of the evocatively symbolic.