The past few years have demonstrated Big Tech’s desire for brand-new “Big and Loud” buildings. Thankfully, Chicago has remained relatively immune to the trend: Unlike Norman Foster’s Apple Park in Cupertino or Amazon’s “Helix” headquarters in Arlington, Virginia (known for its “poop emoji” helical form), tech companies in Chicago have maintained a conservative architectural footprint that, surprisingly, has relied on existing building stock. Google, the most prominent of those tech giants, landed in Chicago’s West Loop in 2015 after rehabbing a modest cold storage building into an unshowy office loft that inspired less “architectural marvel” than it did property value growth in the surrounding neighborhood. But in
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