Marina City Theater, Chicago, Illinois, Roof and Partial Concrete Frame Development Drawing

The Marina City theater building was originally planned as a 1,200-seat, multiuse venue with a large stage housed in the higher end of the saddle-shaped building and two tiers of seating on the opposite side. Graceful line drawings for this early scheme show how the building’s organic shape was generated from detailed exercises in descriptive geometry to model the curving surface. Before the building was completed, however,this plan was modified to accommodate a television-broadcasting studio in the larger space and two smallermovie theaters on the lower level. Although specialized in function, the lobby of the theater played an important role in the complex, as the main entry to the residential towers. The base of the two towers was clearly geared toward the automobile, but at ground level, pedestrians were welcomed into the open space of the lobby, completely enclosed with a mullion-free curving glass wall tucked under the cantilevered mass of the lead-clad theater roof.