The Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Chicago’s Magnificent Mile first opened in November 2019, marking it as the sixth Starbucks roastery globally and the third in the United States. Standing five stories tall, the 35,000 square foot facility is the world’s largest Starbucks. The roastery offers an immersive experience where patrons can ride spiral escalators surrounding a 56-foot cask for 360° views, catch master roasters and baristas impart their vast knowledge on the artistry and science of coffee, and ponder at an incredible, 4-story mural by Chicago artist Eulojio Ortega.
Ortega’s artwork is a progressive piece that pays homage to farmers and coffee-growing regions, exhibiting the art and life of coffee planting, selecting and processing. The mural, brilliant for conveying the story as visitors go from floor to floor, is interestingly located in an exit stairwell.
Traditionally, stairwells are enclosed in opaque walls, leaving them dark, isolated, and rarely utilized unless in an emergency. This is where the architects masterfully blended their creativity with their knowledge of advanced building material technology. To allow the mural to be visible through multiple floors, encourage stair usage and meet fire rated code requirements, the architects redesigned the 2-hour stairwell using transparent, floor-to-ceiling butt-glazed glass walls with the largest tested and listed fire resistive glass panels available.
To meet all the design and code requirements, the architects selected fire resistive, ASTM E-119 rated SuperLite II-XLB 120 by SAFTI FIRST® with Starphire Ultra-Clear glass for its superior optical clarity, large panel sizes and butt-glazing capabilities, which eliminated the need for obstructive vertical mullions for maximum transparency. With the largest individual glass panels over 10’ tall and over 4’ wide, this was easily accommodated by SuperLite II-XLB’s tested and listed size, which is the largest in the industry (133” maximum clear view height or width; 7,980 sq. in. maximum clear view area). As standard glass tends to have a slight blue-green tint from the iron induced from the glass manufacturing process, low-iron Starphire Ultra-Clear glass was used for its superior clarity, improved color neutrality and high visible light transmission – all of which are integral to highlighting the vibrance of Ortega’s artwork and transforming what would have been an ordinary stairwell into a significant element to this Starbucks’s immersive experience.
Each floor of this exit stairwell tells a story about coffee-growing, which is on full display thanks to the floor-to-ceiling expanses and butt-glazing capabilities of SuperLite II-XLB 120 with Starphire Ultra-Clear glass for superior clarity.
To ensure transparency and consistent high clarity with the accompanying entrance system, SAFTI FIRST’s GPX® Builders Series Temperature Rise Door was supplied with fire resistive, ASTM E-119 rated SuperLite II-XL 90 with Starphire Ultra-Clear glass in the door vision panel. This allowed architects to exceed the 100 sq. in. door vision panel code limitation that applies to fire protective glazing like ceramics used as vision panels in 60-90 minute temperature rise doors. The GPX Builders Series Temperature Rise Door and surrounding GPX® Architectural Series Perimeter Framing were supplied in a custom finish to blend seamlessly with Starbucks’s bronze palette.
The outcome is a clear, code-compliant stairwell that flaunts Ortega’s masterpiece and transforms ordinary stair-climbing into a truly one-of-a kind Starbucks experience.
Project Name: Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Chicago, IL
Architect: Perkins + Will
General Contractor: Pepper Construction
Glazing Contractor: SG Metal & Glass
Products: SuperLite® II-XLB 120 with Starphire Ultra-Clear® glass in GPX® Architectural Series Perimeter Framing and SuperLite II-XL® 90 with Starphire Ultra-Clear® glass in GPX® Builders Series Temperature Rise Doors
SAFTI FIRST, SuperLite and GPX are registered trademarks owned by SAFTI FIRST.
Starphire Ultra-Clear is a registered trademark owned by Vitro.
Related Stories
| Oct 13, 2010
Community college plans new campus building
Construction is moving along on Hudson County Community College’s North Hudson Campus Center in Union City, N.J. The seven-story, 92,000-sf building will be the first higher education facility in the city.
| Oct 13, 2010
County building aims for the sun, shade
The 187,032-sf East County Hall of Justice in Dublin, Calif., will be oriented to take advantage of daylighting, with exterior sunshades preventing unwanted heat gain and glare. The building is targeting LEED Silver. Strong horizontal massing helps both buildings better match their low-rise and residential neighbors.
| Oct 12, 2010
Holton Career and Resource Center, Durham, N.C.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Special Recognition. Early in the current decade, violence within the community of Northeast Central Durham, N.C., escalated to the point where school safety officers at Holton Junior High School feared for their own safety. The school eventually closed and the property sat vacant for five years.
| Oct 12, 2010
Richmond CenterStage, Richmond, Va.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Bronze Award. The Richmond CenterStage opened in 1928 in the Virginia capital as a grand movie palace named Loew’s Theatre. It was reinvented in 1983 as a performing arts center known as Carpenter Theatre and hobbled along until 2004, when the crumbling venue was mercifully shuttered.
| Oct 12, 2010
Cell and Genome Sciences Building, Farmington, Conn.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Administrators at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington didn’t think much of the 1970s building they planned to turn into the school’s Cell and Genome Sciences Building. It’s not that the former toxicology research facility was in such terrible shape, but the 117,800-sf structure had almost no windows and its interior was dark and chopped up.
| Oct 12, 2010
Building 13 Naval Station, Great Lakes, Ill.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Gold Award. Designed by Chicago architect Jarvis Hunt and constructed in 1903, Building 13 is one of 39 structures within the Great Lakes Historic District at Naval Station Great Lakes, Ill.
| Oct 6, 2010
Windows Keep Green Goals in View
The DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory has almost 600 window openings, and yet it's targeting LEED Platinum, net-zero energy use, and 50% improvement over ASHRAE 90.1. How the window ‘problem’ is part of the solution.
| Sep 16, 2010
Gehry’s Santa Monica Place gets a wave of changes
Omniplan, in association with Jerde Partnership, created an updated design for Santa Monica Place, a shopping mall designed by Frank Gehry in 1980.
| Sep 13, 2010
Triple-LEED for Engineering Firm's HQ
With more than 250 LEED projects in the works, Enermodal Engineering is Canada's most prolific green building consulting firm. In 2007, with the firm outgrowing its home office in Kitchener, Ont., the decision was made go all out with a new green building. The goal: triple Platinum for New Construction, Commercial Interiors, and Existing Buildings: O&M.
