Marina City, by Bertrand Goldberg Associates

I'd make a case that the greatest Chicago architect after Mies was the recently deceased and still much underappreciated Bertrand Goldberg. Though Goldberg studied at the Bauhaus, he repudiated Miesian doctrine, answering rectangularity with roundness. Like Sullivan, Goldberg saw architecture as organic and thought his buildings through from master plan to tiny detail. Goldberg's iconic work is the Marina City Towers (1967), in which pie-shaped apartments with fabulous views of the city are laid out around a core that acts as a kind of central nervous system. From the outside, the Marina Towers look like standing corncobs. More of a communitarian than Mies, Goldberg designed Marina City not just as a pair of buildings, but as a residential neighborhood that he hoped would persuade people to live near the Loop. The original Marina City had not only boat and car parking, but also a restaurant, stores, a theater, a pool, a skating rink, and a bowling alley.

Photograph by Rolf Achilles