The Bell Amenity Spaces

The Bell stands on West Randolph Street in Chicago’s Loop, introduced in 1966 as the headquarters of the Illinois Bell Telephone Company. Conceived in the language of New Formalism, its cantilevered tower, marble curtain walls, and reflective glass embodied the city’s corporate confidence of the era, a time when ambition, visibility, and material presence defined business culture. Nearly six decades later, Ste Marie has reconceived more than 100,000 square feet of amenity interiors to carry that legacy forward, reframing the corporate tower as a layered world shaped by hospitality, atmosphere, and identity.

The project was approached as a continuous interior landscape, designed to connect the lobby, restaurant, lounges, coworking, wellness, and terraces into a single narrative that extends from street to skyline. The design draws on the glamour and confidence of the mid-century office, creating a diverse range of spaces from ground-floor restaurant and lobby to the building’s upper levels, each telling a chapter of the building’s story. Ste Marie saw the Bell is a living environment where work, leisure, and ritual are interwoven. Within this framework, original elements — marble, walnut, terrazzo, and brass — were restored and reinterpreted. They remain present throughout the building as a connective thread, grounding the new program in its historic context while adapting it for contemporary use.

The lobby establishes this language at street level. The building’s original materials, terrazzo flooring and rich green Verde Guatemala marble, are carried forward and paired with mid-century inspired geometric art, textiles and rugs. A variety of seating is arranged throughout, giving the space the character of a gathering place as much as a threshold. At the building’s edge, a 200-seat bistro and bar, Solette, introduces hospitality into the lobby, activating the ground plane and extending the social character of the building. Polished brass and reflective metals add contrast amongst intimate custom banquettes and walnut millwork.

As the tower rises, the program shifts toward a balance of work and social exchange. Lounges, coworking areas, and meeting spaces are layered to accommodate quiet focus as well as collaboration. Library and games rooms reference the social character of the mid-century office, where business and leisure once overlapped. Dedicated sports courts introduce another layer of activity, extending the idea of workplace as a setting for recreation and community as well as productivity.

Wellness and fitness studios carry wood and travertine into spaces for exercise and recovery, integrating daily rituals into the life of the building. Locker and spa facilities extend this environment with tailored detailing that reinforces continuity across public and private use. Within the uppermost levels, the Clubhouse is connected by an internal undulating marble staircase, offering a mix of lounge, bar, and social settings that lead to landscaped cabanas and terraces overlooking the skyline, and expanding the building’s program outdoors. The Apartment, a more intimate club-like environment, provides further space for private gathering within this sequence.

Throughout the building, layers of reflective metals, feature lighting and custom large-scale artwork inspired by the aspiration and reduction of American mid-century advertising link spaces together. Warm backlit timber panels, brass pendants, and linear fixtures emphasize proportion and detail, while geometric gestures inspired by Gio Ponti and Ettore Sottsass layer in subtle references to the optimism and experimentation of mid-century design.

For Ste Marie, The Bell is an endeavour of cultural revival, a reimaging of Chicago’s corporate landscape to integrate hospitality with a focus on connection, collaboration, restoration and play. Rooted in an iconic era of American design, the renewed Bell carries its legacy forward within the life of the contemporary workplace.

Design: Ste Marie Studio
Architecture: SCB
Construction Partner: Onni Group
Photography: Ema Peter