Featuring 11 Skyfold walls, 155 N Wacker St. in Chicago is a LEED Gold & WELL Platinum Building that hosts premium tenants such as Ernst & Young, Skadden and Mercer.
The building features full-height, energy-efficient glass and column-free bays, providing not only a perfect productive workspace but a very energy-efficient space as well.
You will find these walls on the 18th and 19th floors of Ernst & Young's corporate office—one of the firm’s most recent Skyfold additions to their corporate classroom/meeting spaces. The addition includes two Skyfold Classic 55s finished in standard Duvaltex fabric, with the two middle rows of panels finished in Lampre laminate white markerboard steel for added useability and functionality.
Skyfold's walls were the perfect flexible space solution for Ernst & Young thanks to the high acoustic rating of the Skyfold Classic 55 which allowed the company to host confidential meetings and teach classes in the same space at the same time. Thanks to Skyfold's walls being fully automatic, deploying and moving them was simple and unobtrusive. Further, there was no need for any storage pocket for the wall once retracted into the ceiling, maintaining maximum ceiling and soffit height for the space.
The main challenges for the project were the three existing W21 beams that ran perpendicular to the Skyfold walls. To maximize height, Modernfold Chicago recommended the SE place the new steel for Skyfold above the bottom flange of the existing beams into their web. Furthermore, to maximize ceiling/soffit height and reduce cost with a four-panel high system, it was recommended to P+W to use the Skyfold Classic 55 with a Microdrive motor unit.
Modernfold Chicago completed this project with the help of Perkins & Will Chicago and Clune Construction.