ARCH_500-600 Options Studio: ‘Eads Bridge Tower’

“There’s a lady who’s sure

All that glitters is gold

And she’s buying a stairway to heaven.” 

-Led Zeppelin, 1971

The themes of this studio were the stair, vertical space, and movement. Initial projects and research included precedent studies and a series of hypothetical stair volume models to examine the qualities of light and shadow. For research, students took a field trip to Milan, Italy to visit a variety of buildings and sites designed by OMA, David Chipperfield, Franco Albini, Tadao Ando, Grafton Architects, Giovanni Muzio, Piero Portaluppi, and others. 

Calling on their observations and research studies, students’ final project was to design an observatory tower with exhibition spaces sited north of the Eads Bridge in an area of St. Louis known as Chouteau’s Landing. Chouteau’s Landing is the only enduring example of 19th-century riverfront buildings that remained after the demolition of most of the city’s riverfront in the 1930s.

Each project prioritized multiple ways of viewing the Eads Bridge, the Arch grounds to the south with Eero Saarinen’s Arch, the Mississippi riverfront, and what remains of Choteau’s Landing.