Office building with retail on the the ground floor.

Excellent

The John Hancock building, while still thoroughly modern, is notable for its stark contrast to the transparent curtain-walled buildings of the late 1950s designed by SOM and other firms. Here the design sensibility is quite different, with the relatively solid tower resting on sturdy, arched concrete piers. The building√.s subdivision into top, middle and base is a more traditional configuration, and the window openings punched through the polished granite cladding are compatible with nearby buildings. Since the base is continuous along the street frontages, preserving characteristically modern features of a detatched tower on this corner site required a second level garden terrace which wraps around two sides. Plaza landscaping is by Lawrence Halprin. Overall the John Hancock Building clearly demonstrates a strategy for integrating modern office towers into traditional urban districts without compromising the integrity of either.