Masters Theses

Date of Award

8-2015

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Architecture

Major

Architecture

Major Professor

Tricia A. Stuth

Committee Members

James R. Rose, Valerie Friedmann

Abstract

‘Towers in the park,’ a destructive urbanistic typology that gained notoriety with idealistic projects by Le Corbusier, are prevalent in American cities. This architectural and urban concept consists of mono-functional high-rise towers, typically residential, placed on a superblock of unprogrammed over-scaled greenspace. The original intention was to create order within the city and provide plenty of landscaping and urban space for the city’s occupants. Noble in goals, these mega-towers have been chastised for their lack of character, inappropriate scale, and the inability to create vibrant public space that promote interaction and community by creating an over concentration of segregated nodes without adequate or engaging connections for the public.

As one of these cities that used this typology for its low-income housing projects, Chicago faces many physically segregative issues in its south-side neighborhoods. One such site, Prairie Shores in the Douglas neighborhood, is physically separated from an affluent neighborhood to the west, downtown to the north, and Lake Michigan to the east. Focusing on the physical segregation – as opposed to the racial, economic, and social segregation – this project attempts to reconnect disparate parts of the neighborhood in order to make it a more inclusive part of the city’s urban fabric.

Major urban interventions, such as the one being proposed, are very unlikely due to the immense political, economic, and social barriers that occurs in such a large project. Occasionally an event occurs which allows or even promotes urban interventions at a large scale. This proposal uses one of these events – the Olympics – to investigate the opportunities and issues that come with such a massive infrastructural, social, economic, and urban project. Applying these and other findings to the proposed and rejected Chicago 2016 Olympic Village in Prairie Shores, the proposal seeks to rethink urban and architectural morphologies to better integrate transportation infrastructure, ecology, and public space.

1a_Olympic Images.pdf (664 kB)
Olympic Images

1b_City Chicago.pdf (4884 kB)
City: Chicago

2a_Diagrams Existing.pdf (2324 kB)
Diagrams: Existing

2b_Neighborhood Douglas.pdf (1124 kB)
Neighborhood: Douglas

2c_Diagrams Proposed.pdf (1714 kB)
Diagrams: Proposed

3a_Urban Morphologies.pdf (23 kB)
Urban Morphologies

3b_Site Images.pdf (733 kB)
Site Images

3c_Site Prairie Shores.pdf (974 kB)
Site: Prairie Shores

3d_Site Diagrams.pdf (472 kB)
Site Diagrams

4a_Architectural Morphologies.pdf (24 kB)
Architectural Morphologies

4b_Urban Imaginary.pdf (4979 kB)
Urban Imaginary

4c_Section Gateway School.pdf (609 kB)
Section: Gateway School

4d_Section EcoPark.pdf (363 kB)
Section: EcoPark

4e_Section Cultural Anchor.pdf (371 kB)
Section: Cultural Anchor

SOM_01_Metro Plan.pdf (1593 kB)
SOM: Metro Plan

SOM_02_Park Plan.pdf (491 kB)
SOM: Park Plan

SOM_03_Olympic Village.pdf (255 kB)
SOM: Olympic Village

Files over 3MB may be slow to open. For best results, right-click and select "save as..."

Share

COinS