In our contemporary culture working spaces can no longer be understood as the fixed cubicles where the worker spends the entirety of her day immersed in her own particular task, progressively accumulating piles of paper that will require ample amounts of physical storage. A shift of paradigm is happening, enabled by information technologies, that opens new avenues to reimagine the meaning of space. An office can be a cubicle and also an open co-working area, a cafe, a lounge, a lab, a multipurpose room, virtual substance in the cloud, a room in your house, and much more. This diversification, and enrichment, of the meaning of “office” provides the opportunity to think about architecture in renewed urban terms, especially when the structure that supports such expanded function is a tower with a large physical presence.

Big Bang Tower embraces the scale of the city and the need for transformation in its programs. The convenient shell and core concept developed for modern office buildings is given new spatial scale and quality. The horizontal structures that tie the perimeter columns together contribute to this purpose varying their position, area, and height: manifold ways of framing the city and connecting interior spaces are provoked. This column of columns, that learns from history and reframes the context of the Chicago Tribune Competition, is not dismissive of the competition goal to design “the world’s most beautiful office building.” It looks for the revision of typology and its relation to the urban context.