The new fieldhouse located in the Bronzeville community adjacent to the Chicago Housing Authority Dearborn Homes will replace an existing fieldhouse and will support the Chicago Park District and Chicago Housing Authority’s expanding programming needs. The single-story building includes a 3,800 square foot basketball gymnasium with spectator seating, two multi-purpose community rooms with a shared pantry, offices, reception, and storage space. The entry lobby and corridor are generously sized and will include flexible seating to provide a space for spontaneous gathering and events. The fieldhouse is situated at the center of an eight-and-one-half acre park that includes a playground, baseball and soccer fields, an interactive water spray feature, and basketball courts. The fieldhouse will be the first building in Chicago to be clad in vibrant, stainless steel shingles that respond to different light conditions and appear to change hue when viewed from different angles. This bold and elegant exterior expression enhances the visibility of the fieldhouse and establishes the fieldhouse as a community anchor for the Park District. The materiality at the interior will be limited to select materials including concrete and wood with an expressive wood structural system at the ceiling, upholding the rich historical expression of wood that is found in many historic Park District fieldhouses in Chicago.
Suspended between the clouds, but firmly rooted in their surroundings, the executive offices designed by Rome-based architectural firm Alvisi Kirimoto occupy the entire 32nd floor of a newly built skyscraper in the lively ex-industrial district of West Loop, Chicago. The project, designed to accommodate the client’s headquarters and showcase part of his art collection, fills an area of 2,600 sq. m, within a 224-meter high building located in the heart of the city, on the bank of the homonymous river.
The architects Massimo Alvisi and Junko Kirimoto describe the experience of encountering the space, as follows: “The moment you leave the elevators, arriving on the 32nd floor, you feel as if you were immersing yourself again in the city – at a different height and perspective, of course, but with your feet well planted in the streets of Chicago. It is precisely the layout of the city with its surprises that we strive to project within this space: we stroll through pieces of contemporary and oriental art, or archeology, surprised occasionally by strong colors or the unusual double heights of a skyscraper, guided by the tight rhythm of the walls, the light and the visual axes. In fact, our first instinct was to leave the corners free to maintain constant eye contact with the city. ”
The Foster + Epstein + JGMA design is based upon a sequence of memorable and distinctive spaces that create a gateway to Chicago with architecture that is open, transparent, inclusive, welcoming and functional, in turn resolving the sophisticated security, airport and airline requirements in a way that meets the needs of both employees and passengers. Three arches frame the landside of the building, merging into a grand single arch on the airside, thus dissolving the barrier between inside and out and allowing the spectacle of the airfield to be visible to all who pass through the gateway, and recapturing the romance associated with air travel.
Located at a busy commercial intersection near Lake Michigan and adjacent to a commuter rail stop, City Hyde Park is designed to become a pedestrian-friendly hub that helps encourage the greater urban evolution of its neighborhood. When complete, the 500,000 sf mixed-use project will bring new options for living, shopping, and outdoor recreation and leisure to its full-block site, formerly an underused parking lot and strip mall.
“Umami,” a word of distinctively Japanese provenance, is used to describe the elusive 5th taste; a nuanced and complex combination of salty, sweet, sour, and bitter. “When Umami came to us for a new concept to unify their brand, we suggested bringing the mystery of Umami to life. We wanted to create a space as purposefully composed as their mouth-watering recipes. Using a 360-brand approach, we filtered traditional Japanese design queues through a modern, American lens,” explains Cleo Murnane, Co-founder and Creative Director for Project M Plus.
FCB Chicago, the largest agency within the Foote, Cone & Belding global network, recently relocated to the iconic John Hancock Center. The new office’s modern and comfortable design clearly expresses the spirit, culture and direction of this advertising/marketing powerhouse.
Located in close proximity to the heart of Lincoln Square in Chicago, the new 85,000 SF Lycée Française de Chicago has been conceived as a unique educational with light-filled spaces intended to encourage educational and shared environments aimed to celebrate the Lycée’s international.
After a year of design renovations, a unit in a well-known high-rise apartment building in the heart of downtown Chicago has received a makeover – in part thanks to Banker Wire’s architectural mesh. The apartment features the most luxurious of amenities, and the design team at Becker Architects was faced with the challenge of creating minimalist, yet elegant wall panels to conceal both mechanical equipment and an elaborate home control system.
This urban high school is organized into three thematic components: body, mind and spirit, that relate to the various programs and activities within the school that compose the curriculum. The site is zoned according to these thematic areas and bars are created, housing the athletics (body), the academy classrooms and teaching spaces (mind), and the library, arts and music (spirit). The bars slide against each other to create outdoor spaces on the site, programmed for specific activities that work in conjunction with the buildings—entry courtyard, athletics fields, and reading garden. The three volumes (body, mind, and spirit) that comprise the school are created by one continuous wall that snakes back and forth through the site.
Lucent is a newly unveiled sculpture by UK artist Wolfgang Buttress, created as part of the lobby refurbishment of the iconic John Hancock Center, Chicago, USA.
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