Pushing the Bounds of
High-strength Steel

At the confluence of the three branches of the Chicago River, a new silhouette graces the iconic Downtown Chicago skyline.

Salesforce Tower Chicago is making its debut as the 17th tallest skyscraper in the Windy City. This emerging steel marvel will feature 1.2 million usable square feet and stand 60 stories above the peninsular 333 Wolf Point Plaza.

Also known as Wolf Point South, Salesforce Tower Chicago is the third construction project of the Wolf Point master plan. This three-phase development plan by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects is putting the final touch on one of the only remaining riverfront plots in the Windy City—a prime location for commerce, transportation, and civic activity.

Engineered for Sustainability.
Designed for the Future of Work.

From ground level to the top floor, Salesforce Tower Chicago will boast a glass-clad exterior framed by high- strength steel. The secret to this 25,000-square foot-glass-plated tower’s structural soundness lies within the beautiful synergy of architecture and engineering and the most advanced high-strength steel available domestically.

In order to achieve the design of a glass facade and column-free corners, Magnusson Klemencic Associates (MKA), the Engineer-of-Record, and Walsh Construction, the General Contractor, opted for Nucor’s new Aeos^™ high-strength steel.

Aeos, which stands for Agile, Optimized, Efficient, and Sustainable, is North America’s only domestically produced A913 steel. This advanced steel is not only strong enough to meet the engineering requirements for a tower of this magnitude, but flexible and structurally versatile enough to achieve the project’s innovative architectural vision.

As with any construction project, Salesforce Tower Chicago had a few adjustments along the way. When Cives Steel Company, the project’s fabricator, was faced with an unexpected design change, they turned to Nucor for material that would get the job done—fast.

“On the Salesforce Tower [Chicago] project, we actually had a design change after all material had already been ordered,” Brian Wessel, President and General Manager at Cives Steel Midwest said. “The owner wanted to change the height of a few floors within the building, which ultimately required reordering several column sizes, at which point we approached Nucor and were able to get into the next rollings and got the material ordered and delivered here on time without any real effects to our fabrication timeframe.”

Although the new A913 steel posed a short learning curve for the welding processes, Cives quickly realized the advantages of fabricating with grade 65 steel.

“One of the exciting things with grade 65 material is the potential for elimination of the preheat requirement that you would find with normal grade 50 material when welding,” Wessel said. “We’ve really found that benefit to occur when splicing two grade 65 members together. I will say, initially, a lot of our welders were apprehensive in not performing the preheat. However, as we’ve worked on more and more of the projects requiring grade 65 material, our welders have become more comfortable with it and are now actually eliminating the preheat on a number of splices in our shop where we’re welding grade 65 material together. So there’s a lot of possibility there for time savings in the shop, and that can translate into the field as well.”

Salesforce Tower Chicago is far from completion, but it’s already defining Chicago’s urban epicenter—and the future of steel construction.

“I feel the future of the steel industry is very bright,” Eckmann said.

A new member of the Windy City skyline, Salesforce Tower Chicago displays a beautiful synergy of architecture and engineering made possible by Aeos high-strength steel.