Incremental City

Chicago has been one of the most high-rise-dense cities in the US since the fire of 1971. Located in the heart of downtown Chicago, one block away from the Chicago river, our site is blessed with abundant opportunities to become the next Chicago landmark. With high-rise buildings prevalent in this area, it evident the contemporary high-rise typology needs reimagination. 

Modern high-rise typology has generated much discourse among prominent architects and theorists. Rem Koolhaas, in Delirious New York, posed his famous quote that "the Empire State Building is a building with no other program than to make financial abstraction concrete - that is, to exist." We find Koolhaas' critique valuable as he accurately highlighted the limitations of modern day high-rise buildings.  He places emphasis on their shortcomings in functionality, attention to human sensibility, as well as limited capacity for expansion.

Our project aims to reimagine Thompson Center as a Super Block that provides all the necessities for residents in a city. One of the key concepts of our design is for the building to grow and evolve gradually and organically, instead of being constructed in its entirety. In this way, architecture grows, ages, and evolves with the city as well as its residents. It effectively accommodates the constantly  evolving needs of communities and industries.

The building is divided into a multitude of units hung from the central structural core. It is the public who, decides the function, location, and size of each unit to add to the structure.  The building will grow gradually and organically, as opposed to full determinism of developers. The building is generated from the ground up, mimicking the growth of a tree. The façade of the building, made of polished metal and in an organic form, suggests the notion of future growth. Each program is also assigned a different façade articulation as needed. For example, residential units have balconies while retail and art museums have LED panels or large banners hung from their façade.

The locations of the programs of this Super Block include but are not limited to residential, retail, office, art museum, theatres, auditoriums, and most importantly, a vertical garden that situates itself within the rotunda. Locations and relative heights of those programs are organized from bottom to top based on a scale of public to private. The units are also organized according to their specific needs of sunlight, ventilation, circulation and relationship with each other. The position of the building relative to the site mainly preserved the original building's footprint. Since the rotunda is the most distinguishable component of the original building, we are retaining it while adding a vertical garden within. 

We acknowledge that the original structure provided seldom access to the public.  After renovation, we seek to open the building as much as possible on the ground floor, providing vast public seating, a retail belt, and a safe pedestrian-bicycle shared route in the form of a helix. In providing this, we aim to transform the building into a regional center for public activity. Additionally, we are linking this building to its surroundings, such as the subway station and adjacent buildings, through elevated bridges that promote regional connectivity. 

At the urban scale, we aim to create a new Chicago Landmark that, through its incremental construction, documents the history of the city and engagement of its people. We were envisioning that multiple communities can be brought together to participate in different phases of the design process so that we can create space to best suit their needs.

By interactively delivering the above programmatic necessities, we aim to present this proposal as a critique to modern-day high-rise typology to the following elements: We are introducing an incremental method of construction in response to the high-rise's common inability to adapt and grow over time. Secondly, in challenging the typical high-rise's closure to the public, we aim for this building to be open to multiple communities by creating vast vertical gardens and public space throughout the entirety of the building. Lastly, unlike most modern high-rises that only contain few specific functions, we propose a Super Block that satisfies all needs of vertical living.