TILT is housed in 360 CHICAGO on the 94th floor of the John Hancock Tower and, as the name suggests, the enclosed glass and steel platform tilts visitors forward for a unique perspective of the city 1000 feet up.
Cn Tower Glass Floor Crack
If you make it to Toronto its well worth the visit. At 147 stories tall (1815 feet) it offers an impressive view of the city. Visit late in the day to watch the sunset and the city lights come on, quite spectacular. Its even better on a windy day as it moves around quite a bit up there, and looking straight down from the glass floor reveals the nicely cracked concrete.
The glass elevator ride up is worth the price of admission! Its pretty much like riding a rocket at it reaches the top in about 90 seconds. The main floors house the observation decks, including one outside (its well caged). There is also a revolving restaurant that is pricey, but worth it as it takes about an hour to give a full 360 degree view of the city.
A section of the floor has been replaced with glass that the brave can walk out onto and look straight down, 1500 feet. It is quite a thrill! Especially when a little fat kid belly flops onto the glass right beside me.
Views from the CN Tower in Toronto is also thanks to lots of glass. The floor-to-ceiling panoramic window walls, glass floor, and glass elevators offer spectacularly chilling views of the area.
The tower's first outdoor observation deck is named "At The Top" and first opened in 2010 on the 124th floor. At the time it was the highest outdoor observation deck in the world until it was surpassed the following year by the Cloud Top 488 on the Canton Tower in Guangzhou in China.
Like the CN Tower in Toronto in Canada (the tallest tower in North America), this observation deck has a glass floor. This is not for the faint-hearted as it can feel like stepping out into certain death with countless millions of years of evolution screaming out saying don't do it!
But even more frightful, this is a glass floor with a nerve-wracking twist. One can feel the glass crack underneath one's feet. See who in the group freaks out first! This level is 456 meters (or 1,496 feet). That is even higher than the limited CN Tower's highest SkyPod that rises to 447 meters. The CN Tower's glass floor is 342 meters (1,122.0 feet) high.
These are only the latest additions to a growing trend of vertigo-inducing tourist attractions. Recent years have seen the debuts of the Grand Canyon's Skywalk, the Jasper National Park Glacier Skywalk, the "Void" glass box at Aiguille du Midi in the French Alps, the Tokyo SkyTree with its glass floor panels, and new glass floor sections installed at the Eiffel Tower. Even the Malaysian island of Langkawi has gotten in on the glass-bottomed craze, adding sections of glass flooring across the span of the curved, 410-feet-long Sky Bridge which connects the peaks of two mountains.
Updated 10/7/15. Only twice has the fear of falling through nearly been realized. In May of 2014, the glass floor of one of the "Ledge" glass box balconies atop Chicago's Willis Tower cracked, prompting the attraction to close for inspection, later reopening with new panels in place and protective coating applied. And today in China's Henan province, a u-shaped glass walkway that juts out from Yuntai Mountain started to crack, according to news.com.au, prompting a few terrifying moments as people ran off the bridge. Just one of the three layers of glass fractured, but the walkway is closed to the public for further inspection.
The building occupies a site bounded by Franklin Street, Jackson Boulevard, Wacker Drive, and Adams Street. Graham and Khan designed the building as nine square "tubes", clustered in a 33 matrix; seven of the tubes set back at upper floors. The tower has 108 stories as counted by standard methods, though the building's owners count the main roof as 109 and the mechanical penthouse roof as 110.[1][3] The facade is made of anodized aluminum and black glass. The base of the building contains a retail complex known as the Catalog. The lower half of the tower was originally occupied by retail company Sears, which had its headquarters there until 1994, while the upper stories were rented out.
Sears executives estimated that their new building would need about 4.2 million square feet (390,000 m2), split into 70 stories with 60,000 square feet (5,600 m2) each or 60 stories with 70,000 square feet (6,500 m2) each.[10] Sears commissioned architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) to design the tower.[17] Sears planned to move its merchandise group into the building initially, renting out the remaining space to other tenants until needed. Sears executives were accustomed to large floor areas of at least 100,000 square feet (9,300 m2), but SOM architects raised concerns that the large floors would be unattractive to smaller tenants. A subsequent proposal called for two buildings connected by a footbridge, which would respectively contain 50,000 square feet (4,600 m2) and 30,000 square feet (2,800 m2) on each floor, but this was also infeasible.[17]
Some floors were designed with smaller footprints to attract prospective lessees, so the building's height was increased to meet Sears's floor-area requirements.[17] Architect Bruce Graham and structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan proposed a tower with 55,000-square-foot (5,100 m2) floors in the lower part of the building, as well as a series of setbacks with gradually tapering floor plates, giving the tower its distinctive look.[18] During the design process, one of the architects reportedly pulled out nine cigars and staggered them vertically until the pair both agreed to the arrangement.[18][19] This allowed Sears to occupy the large lower stories, while providing more conventional office space that could be rented out on the upper stories.[20] The firm of Saphier, Lerner, Schindler was responsible for determining Sears's space requirements and designing furniture for the company.[14][21] It conducted a year-long study to determine how 16 of the company's departments should be laid out within the building.[21]
In November 1972, the Sears Tower became Chicago's tallest building,[60] surpassing the Standard Oil Building, which had held the record for one month.[61] At the time, the Sears project employed 1,600 workers in three shifts; one worker had been killed during the project so far.[27][60] The building's final completion had been delayed significantly due to labor strikes and bad weather. The concrete work had reached the 77th floor, while the steel superstructure had reached the 84th floor; the remainder of the steelwork would be difficult to construct because of high winds at higher altitudes.[60] Local television stations WTTW and WLS-TV were planning to install temporary broadcast antennas atop the tower when the steel frame was completed.[62] The tower's superstructure had reached the 100th floor in February 1973, at which point it was taller than the Empire State Building in New York City.[63]
In February 1984, Sears announced that it would renovate the building to attract visitors to the lower floors.[86][87] At the time, 6,500 Sears employees occupied more than half of the building,[87][88] taking up the lowest 48 stories.[88] The remainder of the tower was occupied by 5,500 employees from about 70 companies.[87] As part of the project, the main entrance was covered with a four-story glass dome, and the first four stories were converted into a shopping atrium. In addition, a visitor center for the building's Skydeck was constructed.[86][87] The renovations, designed by SOM, were completed in mid-1985.[88] Paul Gapp of the Chicago Tribune wrote that SOM had "scaled the new entrance skillfully, in keeping with the main building's height" and that the new atrium "relieves the formerly cramped feeling from just inside the Franklin entrance".[89]
During the Sears Tower's construction, SOM and Chicago government officials considered adding "smoke free and fire free" areas to the building, as well as a complete sprinkler system serving all floors. Neither of these features had previously been used in a structure in Chicago.[163] Even though regulations did not require a fire sprinkler system, the building was equipped with one from the beginning. There are around 40,000 sprinkler heads in the building, installed at a cost of $4 million.[156] When it was completed, the Sears Tower was heated electrically, unlike older structures that used gas heating.[164] It included 145,000 light fixtures and a cooling system capable of 17,000 tons of refrigeration.[27][12] Furthermore, the tower contained fire-suppression and communications systems for emergency use, which were powered by diesel generators.[149][165] If there was a fire in one section of the building, the building's smoke-detection system would close off the fresh-air intake openings in that section, discharging smoke outdoors.[149]
The commercial complex at the building's lowest stories is known as the Catalog, a reference to Sears' mail-order catalogs.[121][170] The six-story complex includes numerous restaurants.[170] It extends into three of the building's basement levels, as well as the three-story annex to the south and west of the tower.[121] The roof of the annex includes a curved skylight with 240 glass panes, and the northern section of the annex's roof is supported by black columns that resemble those in the original tower. The Catalog also contains decorative details, such as handrails and staircase landings, which are inspired by elements of Chicago's "built environment".[171] The third story of the Catalog contains a 30,000-square-foot coworking space operated by Convene.[159][171]
In January 2009, a major renovation of the Skydeck began, including the installation of retractable glass balconies which extend approximately 4 feet (1.2 m) from the facade of the 103rd floor, overlooking South Wacker Drive. The all-glass boxes, informally dubbed "The Ledge", allow visitors to see the street below. The boxes, which can accommodate 5 short tons (4.5 metric tons), opened to the public on July 2, 2009.[174][175] On May 29, 2014, the laminated glass flooring of one of the boxes cracked while visitors were inside, but there were no injuries.[176] The flooring of the same box cracked again on June 12, 2019.[177] In May 2022 a fifth glass ledge opened on the west facade overlooking South Wacker Drive. 2ff7e9595c
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