The Monadnock Building in Chicago Un edificio-manifesto nel crocevia di sperimentazioni tecniche e costruttive

Abstract

The clean slate left by the Great Fire of 1871 became an opportunity that transformed the city into a sort of great laboratory of unparalleled technical and stylistic experiments. The Monadnock and its peculiar façade, which continues unabated for sixteen floors of bricks, finds its most characteristic aspect, in the choice of using pillars in load-bearing masonry, using them from the structural point of view. The role of steel in Monadnock does not stop at the structure of the interior floors. One of the features that most throws the concept of “monolithicity†of the Monadnock into crisis is in the wide use of steel in the jutting out structures of the bay windows, not simply reliefs hanging from the structure of brick pillars, but a real extension of the frame indoor.