Word: monadnock
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Dates: during 1963-1963
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Chicago's 16-story Monadnock Building, built in 1891, required masonry 15 ft. thick at the base to support the crushing load. Such walls were made unnecessary by the so-called "curtain wall," hung from the building's frame. But since World War II, the architects' slang for a building's outer covering, "skin," has become especially appropriate; thin, lightweight metals and glass have turned more and more office buildings into glistening, icy slabs of graph-paper monotony. What Frank Lloyd Wright called "those flat-chested facades" has become a national vice...