Chicago has been the birth-place of a new metropolitan architecture able to produce typological innovation through a rich combination of different uses, a sustainable architecture because of its durable image and materiality, an architecture able to be at the same time pragmatically responding to new specific needs and, in a different way, able to promote cultural continuities with precedents. The studio chose Chicago to experiment possible “descendants” of these two cultural trajectories, with Chicago as context and Milan as paradigm.
This project locates at the crossing of Ogden Avenue and W.Adam St. in West Loop, Chicago. As to engage this vast currently under-developed area of space with its urban surroundings, the massing strategy here is to build up density and a strong urban presence along major streets and corners, in order to produce both a synthetic form and a clearly defined public space through such a form.
Not unlike the Monadnock, the building is comprised of many, if not just two parts internally, despite its synthetic form. Perhaps two, as the triangular volume contains rehabilitation programs as part of the medical complex, and a brewery on the ground; or perhaps three, as the longer volume is divided internally into a medical laboratory to the left, a parking garage to the right, and respectively a sports facility and a fire station on the ground floor; or perhaps four, even, if the railway could formally be integrated into the formula. Regardless of the mixture of programs, which are either related to the use of land or the need of the neighborhood, the ambition of the project is to, in turn, synthesize all in one presence through architectonic expressions on the facades that is consistent throughout, but at the same time consists of different spaces, programs and bears consequence from the different uses, resulting in nuances in terms of floor height, structural thickness, dimension, and sectional relationships.
Advised by Angelo Lunati and Giancarlo Floridi, Fall 2022, Module Studio 2, Harvard GSD