Architect, engineer, mathematician. Romantic, visionary, humanist. Calatrava is an intriguing blend of left and right brain—the realist rooted in practicality and the dreamer whose imagination is always ready to take flight. Inspired by the repetition of form found in nature, he is as much a painter, sculptor, designer and engineer as he is an architect.

We wanted to celebrate Calatrava’s inspiration from nature in the brand identity. The mark therefore developed from the footplate of the building and the nautilus shell that inspired its shape. This was supported by the copy line “Inspired by Nature, Imagined by Calatrava.” The brand identity for the Chicago Spire is the supreme expression of Calatrava’s interweaving influences from nature, geometry, form, structure and, perhaps most closely of all, family.

The brand had to communicate all these things with the right balance of engineering, architecture and art. The Chicago Spire is a building for people to live in; it is not for a corporation or hotel. Therefore the execution had to have a certain lightness of touch, warmth and welcoming that many other buildings had never seen before.