It's Curious City, where we take your questions about Chicago and the region, and investigate, report.

Explore.

From WBEZ.

Hey, Jesse Dukes here, Curious City's audio producer.

Today, we're bringing you an architecture story we did a few years ago.

It all started with this question.

My name's Tom Cole, curious citizen.

So my question was about the handful of buildings I've noticed in the Chicago Loop

that essentially have no doors and no windows,

and they're sort of just mixed in across the landscape with other buildings,

and I was wondering why they're there and what's inside of them.

Tom has three buildings in mind, and they all look really different. He suspects they have something in common.

Specifically, they house some kind of utility.

And he's right. We call them infrastructure buildings.

They provide electricity, heat, cooling, phone services.

To learn more about the specifics of these buildings, we got help from Jen Masongarp,

who at the time worked for the Chicago Architecture Center.

Jen started our story by explaining why she finds this kind of building so fascinating.

Well, think about the dilemma that architects wrestle with when designing utility or infrastructure

buildings. They're dealing with gritty machinery, pipes, wires, stuff that people find ugly,

right? But at the same time, this infrastructure needs to sit right near hotels, retail, offices,

places that are supposed to be beautiful. Well, I guess we'll get a chance to see how architects tackle that dilemma.

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