Wainwright Building ( Louis Sullivan)

Located at 701 Chestnut St. the Wainwright Building was

designed by the famed architects Adler and Sullivan in 1891. The
Wainwright building is credited for being the first successful
utilization of steel frame construction. The first two floors are
faced in brown sandstone, the next seven stories rise in
continuous brick piers. Terra cotta panels of ornate foliage relief's
decorate the each floor. The tenth story is a frieze of intertwined
leaf scrolls framing circular windows, and is capped with
Sullivan's characteristic overhanging roof slab. The building
became a City Landmark in 1972.
The building was designed for Ellis wainwright , St.louis Brewer’s
association
Structure and Material Used in building
Wainwright Building is considered as
one of the first early skyscrapers in the
world and also described as “highly
influential prototype of the modern
office building”. Wainwright Building
presents Sullivan’s theories about the
tall building, which included a
three-part composition
(base-shaft-attic) based on the
structure of the classical column. The
base refers to retails which needs wide
glaze opening. Above it, there are the
semi-public nature of offices up a
single flight of stairs requires broad
windows.
Materials used in building are steel for frame structure and
terracotta facade for ornamentation and brick piers for the above
floor and brown sand stone for two floors.
Concept of Building Is “FORM FOLLOW FUNCTION”
All things in nature have a shape," Sullivan said, "that is to say, a
form, an outward semblance, that tells us what they are, that
distinguishes them from ourselves and from each other." That these
shapes "express the inner life" of the thing is a law of nature, which
should be followed in any organic architecture. Sullivan suggests
that the exterior "shell" of the skyscraper should change in
appearance to reflect interior functions. If this new organic
architectural form was to be part of natural beauty, the building's
facade should change as each interior function changes.
Sky scraper = verticallity = vertical strip ornamentation
Spaces of the Building
The skyscraper must be tall, every inch of it tall. The force and power of
altitude must be in it, the glory and pride of exaltation must be in it. It
must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exultation
that from bottom to top it is a unit without a single dissenting line."

The facade of the building is square

and in which we can observe that
there are openings and that they
generate rhythm by repitation .we
can also observe that on this front
in the upper part there are porthole
-type windows in the analysis
function of this building of the flats
with quadrangular plan we observe
that on the ground floor it is in
contact with the public, we find in
the lobby on the stairs and in the
various common areas we can see
that the interior presents symmetry
as well as the exterior.
. In the body of the building,a
series of repitation of the upper
floor are generated where the
office area attached to each
other.it passes through each one
of them generating easy access
and present a large number of
openings
In the cut you can see the attic
which contains the mechanical
services of the building the
continuity of the stairs the offices
in the common areas the
basement and the entry of
natural light through the
hands,this generates better
comfort in the environment.
 Ornamentation of Building

The linkage between beer and the Wainwright Building is also present
in the exuberant decorative terracotta that adorns the building’s
entrance and façade. The predominant motifs throughout the
building’s ornamental system are abstracted images of two plants from
the Cannabaceae family of erect or twining herbs: the common hop, or
Humulus lupulus, and hemp, or Cannabis . Images of the twining bine
and the hop flower play a prominent role in the Wainwright Building’s
Chestnut Street entrance façade, This connection between the
verticality of a tall building and the hop poles is echoed in a 1916
advertisement for Budweiser that shows hop bines climbing the
vertical piers of a stock house .
Sullivan also drew upon historical sources of vertical vegetal
ornamentation for the design of the rectangular terracotta panels
around the doorway, such as the Flemish Renaissance strapwork
that adorned the entry porch of Pabst’s mansion in Milwaukee. The
ornament appears to emerge from within the building itself out onto
the façade, as “bowers of intensely designed ornamentation” 51
One set of vertical panels depicts a swirling, twining hop bine with
spiky horizontal forms, climbing in ovals around a central support
Another band of ornament is composed of a series of oval pods.
THE WAINWRIGHT BUILDING circular elements that recall the
cross section of a hop cone . This oval pattern with circular
elements at the center is present throughout the Wainwright façade,
in the panels underneath the sixth and seventh floors, and in the
capitals that terminate at the cornice