24/7 Metropolis | in collaboration with Zachary Osborne and Lainy Stamos | under supervision of Steven Brubaker
Embodied City | Proposal to bridge the urban chasm created by the I90-94 in downtown Chicago
Click here to view project on IIT COA website.
Connect and Enliven
This proposal aims to unite two disparate areas, bridging the chasm defined by the interstate corridor.
Existing to the east is a loosely grouped loft district, lacking any singular defining character, anchored primarily by Saint Francis Xavier parish. To the west is Greektown with its vibrant street life and established urban form and fabric. Strong sense of identity enhanced by color and smell enliven the neighborhood. North, the neighborhood is both repurposed and revitalized. Old warehouses and historic vestiges of industry are again alive with activity, including culinary, residential, artistic, and industrial.
Slicing through these diverse areas is one singular, overpowering element – the I-90/94 expressway. Devoid of any human accommodation or scale, it serves most as a means of connection and convenience but to those within the neighborhood, it proves divisive and discombobulating. Our project draws from these distinct established atmospheres, strengthening their established presence while concurrently harvesting their diverse energies and employing them to create a new central zone. It is in this zone that atmospheres begin to blend with each other, creating unique experiential, cultural, and programmatic experiences. Additionally, the environment assumes a new role, working in combination with program to enliven this newly materialized district. Landscape becomes natural, structured, and even suppressed, providing complement to structures as well as powerful experience in itself.
Ultimately, urban forms, existing and introduced, built and natural, physical and intangible, all combine to create previously unseen physical and sensory environment
sameness - no room for visual stimulation or imagination
exclusion - mental completion of imagined, yet normal situations
unite - corbusian solid
uffizi - vasarian void
the usefulness of urban poche is its ability, as a solid, to be engaged or engage the urban void - to act as both figure or ground according to circumstance.
Urban Typologies | source – Kevin Lynch, Image of the City
Diagramming Techniques | source – Kevin Lynch, Image of the City
Atmospheres and Sweeps
This proposal does not aim to introduce foreign urban scenarios. Rather, it intends to identify existing urban atmospheres, qualities, and densities and augment these through the introduction of connective linkages. By identifying atmospheres, the resultant urban planning strategy is able to create a large scale intervention which extends beyond the bounds of its development.
Materiality is utilized to reinforce the character of introduced circulation as well as reconnect to the character of existing districts.
Public Space
Due to their large scale and surrounding diversity, the public spaces situated within the plan are situated to become Chicago's next great urban space. The variety of programmatic adjacencies demand accomodation of activities that differ in both scale and publicity. A gradiated level of hard to soft scape in additon to degrees of openness and intimacy meet these demands throughout the year.
view of recreation atmosphere highlighting the green sweep along Jackson St. linking extsing parks along Desplaines to Mary Bartlme Park, stregthening the residential character of the area and providing outdoor space for newly introduced schools
Path, Node, Activity, and Landmark
Diagramming with the classifiactions provided by Kevin Lynch, the plan is illustrated as having four key paths and an integral node, situated between Washington and Randolph Streets. The character of these paths is shown as changing in intensity and activity while criss-crossing a central sone, culminating around the node. The majority of major landmarks are clustered at the node.
Parcelization and Development
Building volume guidelines and parcelization strategy are key to the implementaion of urban development over time. Building volumes and thier corresponding program distribution guarantee that the integrity of the urban plan's intention remains as it is carried out over a series of years by various authors. This allows a cohesive design strategy to remain true without assuming the character of a district that feels to have been executed with a single brush stroke.
Parcelization guarantees that independent developers are held accoutable for the construction of the urban plan's central space. This freeway covering, integral to the new activies and district that the plan proposes would, under other strategies, prove to be prohibitively expensive. In this way, when adjoining parcels are developed, large portions of the freeway's covering begin to take shape, increasing density and encourgaing the development of additional parcels. Through this strategy, a skyscraper veil is avoided and dynamic covering, key to the node/atmosphere/path plannign strategy, is guaranteed.
Parcel 1 | Culinary Institute, Hotel, Residential Units, and Plaza Retail
Parcel 3 | Human Spirit Institute, Residential Units, Street Retail, and Roofscape Amenities
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Parcel 4 | Middle School, Loft Office, Street Retail, and Shared Fitness Amenities
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Parcel 7 | Children's Museum, Residential Units, Street Retail, Park-Front Retail, and Museum Plaza
Parcel 9 | Life Science + Bioethics Institute, Confrence Center, Street-Front Retail, and Educational Outoor Space
Parcel 10 | Hotel, Event + Conference Center, Retail, and Roof Amenities
Parcel 11 | Residential Units, Labor Leaders' Hall of Fame, Machinery Hall, and Retail
zoom view of entertainment atmosphere
zoom view of exploratory atmosphere
zoom view of recreation atmosphere
entertainment
exploration
recreation
Transverse section through entertainment atmosphere showing culinary institute, hotel cantilever, and machinery hall.
Transverse section through exploratory atmosphere showing reinforced Halstead corridor, manufacturing center, and life science instiute.
Transverse section through recreation atmosphere showing reinforced Halstead corridor, middle school, office, and residential + children's museum.
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Transverse section through recreation atmosphere showing elementary school, and residential + children's museum.
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view of entertainment atmosphere showing hotel, culinary institute, and Washington St.
view of entertainment atmosphere showing hotel, conference center, plaza retail environment with shared pedstrian and vehicular traffic
view of Halstead Street corridor showing enhanced continuity with retail and on-street parking
view of exploratory atmosphere showing winter scene with the life sciences instiute offering various public demonstrations
model demonstrating massing and program strategies
model of developed parcels placed within the urban proposal
life science and bio-ethics institute
Life Science Incubator and Bio-Ethics Institute | situated within 24/7 Metropolis proposal
view to the north with Monroe St. and bioethics institute in the foreground
This project aims to incite unique social interactions while achieving the highest standard of contemporary laboratory design practices.
In distributing the building’s three major programmatic components, the lab spaces, public exhibit spaces, and institutional spaces, we hope to produce chance encounters that prove highly fruitful within scientific environments.
The lab tower, with its long-span structure providing for uninhibited placement of equipment and ease of configuration, pairs flexible research space with unique amenity pods granting each level its individual identity. These pods, containing functions such as cafe, gym, and media center, assume unique forms that are resultant of their internal organization. Working in consort with the southern screen wall the pods establish both formal and solar characteristics.
The bioethics institute serves as the counterpoint to the dynamic forms of the research lab tower. Its airy quality, a result of its structural lightness, is an attempt to create the serene environment expected of such institutions. Programmatic inserts fit neatly into its framework, providing spaces for discussion, residence, and reflection.
Subterranean exhibit spaces serve to link these two unique environs, becoming the platform for public interaction with scientific pursuits. The flexibility of this underground level, with its auditorium, variety of small breakout rooms, and movable partitions, aids in the creation of an exhibition and educational space with a multiplicity of configurations.
Ultimately, a proliferation of landscape unites these seemingly disparate elements in to a uniquely composed whole. The greenery that climbs the southern face of the labs also climbs the cage-like structure of the ethics institute while also punctuating the open space of the exhibits below. Landscape adapts to create retreat, building façade, and dynamic public space.
Conclusively, this project is itself a complex organism and, through its avoidance of an ultimate formal harmony, it achieves a strange attraction.
We begin with a 600k sf requirement
This volume is reorganized into three bars
Square footage is redistributed
The resultant bars are assigned program
Retail is added at-grade
Parking is added below-grade
The primary laboratory volume curves
Atmosphere activity carves the site and is aided by the lab bar's curvature
This connection links plaza and neighborhood activities
The building's central access point is situated along this connective link
Vertical circulation spreads from the central point of access
Horizontal circulation is distributed to the lab tower's perimeter allowing for free floor area and on the south of the ethics institute to afford offices views of the site
program distribution and circulation strategy diagrams
view of west along Madison St. showing lab tower and research residence to the south
view of north facade and mullion fin detail
view south from Madison St. beneath lab cantilever
view of northwest facade showing truss and mullion detail
view west from Desplaines St. showing south screen wall, amenity pods, and light wells
view north from Monroe St. showing south screen wall, amenity pods, and light wells, and structure of ethics institute
view to above from within the cenral light well
elevated view from the corner of Monroe St. and Desplaines St. showing the south wall of the lab tower, retail kiosks along Desplaines St. and the light wells dotting the shared green space
pull apart to reveal the subterranean conference and exhibit spaces linking the two key program elements