Chicago River Village: Celebrating Communities, Enriching Lives

Abstract

As Part of the "Tall Buildings" seminar at the Yale School of Architecture with Professor Kyoung Sun Moon, this paper reflects on the author's proposal for a linked tower complex along Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. In reaction to the city's fragmentation by the Lake Shore highway, the project reimagines high-rise dwelling as an expansion of the public realm. The podium and base levels are reimagined as an intimate "village", weaving a public fabric of gardens, retail, and public space, flowing up into the office and residential programs, forming a contiguous, activated environment that promotes interaction, accessibility, and a renewed connection to the city's waterfront and surrounding neighborhoods. Future development of the project includes employing a hybrid timber-concrete structural system, which attempts to integrate sustainable methods with urban connectivity. This paper therefore attempts to examine the site's history and the architectural discourse on how towers engage with the ground plane in an effort to encourage an alternate approach to the design of tall buildings. Furthermore, the paper evaluates environmental and social benefits of integrated mixed-use developments with a focus on the podium as an activated pedestrian village that feeds into the vertical space of the towers.