Godfrey hotel

In early 2004, VDTA was commissioned to design a 16‐story extended stay suites hotel at the corner of Lasalle and Huron Streets in Chicago by the site’s original developer, Duke Miglin. It was his desire to employ a staggered truss structural framing system for the building – something new to Chicago – for its speed and efficiency of erection. Construction began in 2007 but the project fell victim to the economic downtown in 2008, topped out with just the first components of exterior cladding installed. For three years the partially constructed structure sat, a rusting, tarp‐wrapped reminder of the Great Recession, an eyesore on the skyline dubbed “The Mummy” by the neighborhood’s residents.

In 2011, Oxford Capital Group examined the structure and saw potential in the unique, forward‐looking staggered steel truss framed design. Working with The Gettys Group, Oxford developed a new upscale “boutique‐lifestyle” hotel concept envisioned for repurposing the partially built structure. With this new concept in-hand, Oxford engaged VDTA to make modifications to the original building design while retaining the iconic design of expressive structural frame and assembly of shifted, taut, rectilinear building masses. The hotel opened in February 2014.

The design of the Godfrey Hotel is a continuing exploration of modernist forms, but this experiment looks to a more muscular approach where the juxtaposition of huge yet apparently weightless masses rest on a gracefully balanced structural skeleton reasserting the indeterminate, an ambiguous condition of modern times in what is a truly unexpected way. The taut metal skinned building forms that shift inward and outward to reveal the expressive structural frame are intentionally daring and honest, a real “Chicago” building, linking to the city’s rich past of architectural innovation

It also is a system where the deep trusses allow a remarkable freedom to express the program of the hotel, where today’s guest is looking for that unique room satisfies their unique needs and preferences. From its base the building form is offset three times, creating rooms of varying depths, creating 26 different room types for a hotel with 221 keys. In addition, the long span trusses create large clear span public and amenity spaces on the 4th floor.

The structural system allows the design to celebrate the human variability its guests, expressing this fact with a form that seemingly defies gravity obeying its own fuzzy logic. It is the exception, along LaSalle Street, that proves the rule that all tall buildings should be boxes no matter what their function.