JAMES R. THOMPSON CENTER
CHICAGO PRIZE 2021
CHICAGO ARCHITECTURAL CLUB CHICAGO ARCHITECTURE CENTER
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THE PEOPLE OF CHICAGO CENTER The survival of this building is predicated on politics rather than design. It won’t be razed due to a lack of creative ideas. Instead, once sold into the private market, it will be replaced with a towering effigy of property value. This building acts as a framework for urban activity. It’s plaza and rotunda serving as a frame to hold protest and political activity. Designed to illustrate the concept of a “transparent government”, this building most often operates as a home for members of the public pushing back against oppression and fighting for justice. It’s atrium is a gathering place for demonstration when brutal winters render parks and plazas bare. It’s geometric construction is simple, elegant, and egalitarian. For this reason I propose no design solution - the structure was pure in it’s conception and only flawed in execution and long term care. The building’s mechanical and acoustic performance should be assessed by the appropriate engineering disciplines - and solutions incorporated that respect the building’s true purpose. The building should be transferred to public trust and operated as a fully public space - a continuation of the street. Office spaces should be provided to mutual aid groups, community organizations, and other social and educational functions dedicated to the betterment of the public good. Buildings like the State of Illinois center are valuable beyond what anyone could pay for them. As an oasis of public space in an encroaching sea of privatization, this structure represents and defends those who need it most.
Entry as submitted by: Devin Gora
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THE ARK Given the site’s location, the building cannot be simply repurposed for an everyday use. It must join the network of public destinations in the in the Loop District and become a true mixed-use urban hub as well as a tourist attraction. Like Noah’s Ark, the building must accommodate and showcase the best of Chicago’s intellectual and creative life. The project will accommodate working spaces on the upper floors as well as the art district (Art at The Ark) with artist studios and galleries as well as curated cafes and stores. The ground floor and the concourse level will be opened to the outdoors and to the public as the 2-level public plaza. That would integrate the site into the system of Downtown’s public spaces and preserve the legacy of JR Thompson Center as the civic place. One of the key program components is the exhibition on the future of urban horticulture focused on Chicago region. It extends all the way to the roof and turns the atrium from a liability into an asset. The exhibition will cover subjects like the future of urban parks, stormwater management, creating habitats for attracting wildlife back into the city to support ecological diversity (e. g. urban bees), etc. The exhibition will be a collaborative project of Chicago institutions and nonprofits engaged in research of related areas. The building will also offer participating institutions additional space for temporary exhibitions as well as classroom and laboratory space conveniently located in the downtown.
Entry as submitted by: Viktoria Diskina, Misa Chen
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THOMPSON CENTER INTERVENTION The intention with this exploration is to provide a greater sense of openness and accessibility to the project, while reducing the volume of conditioned space. This would be achieved by removing the sloping glass roof structure and replacing it with new exterior walls related to the floor plan footprint. The atrium and its glass roof would remain, with a new vertical glass wall suggested as the new exterior perimeter for the atrium, replacing the sloping glass roof. A new entry area roof, also of glass, sloping from the 3rd to 4th floor levels, is also suggested.
Entry as submitted by: William Burch
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2021 CHICAGO PRIZE: JAMES R. THOMPSON The brief life of the Thompson Center has been filled with both great praise and harsh criticism. Praise for its grand transparent urban space and criticism for the bawdy colored exterior and interior mechanical flaws. This proposal attempts to salvage the best of the building without discarding it altogether. Having people live, work, and socialize downtown will energize the loop. The interior floors surrounding the open atrium would remain intact, serving as a community of shops, bars, restaurants, grocers,a library, theatres, clinics and more. The floors to the north along Lake Street become work/live and affordable housing units. Office and/or apartment space would be located in the new tower. The important connection to the El and subway trains on Lake Street and pedway tunnels would remain. All aspects of the city: museums, theaters, parks, lake, river, and sports are within walking distance. A series of cascading corten steel trusses would cover the open existing atrium floors of the Thompson Center. Each level creates an outdoor landscaped roof space scaled to the City Hall building to the south. A new tall north tower completes the complex. The trusses echo the iconic bascule bridges of the nearby Chicago River. The trusses also allow the south plaza area to remain open, landscaped and home to the Dubuffet sculpture, the’ Standing Beast’. What is most important is not the building, but the energy that people will bring to the loop, spurring other similar projects and making the downtown a living place rather than a 9-5 environment.
Entry as submitted by: Thomas Hickey
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THE ILLINOIS BUILDING The James R. Thompson Center is a piece of civic architecture of steel and glass representing a transparent, spatial exchange between Illinoisans and their government. It is rooted in the public realm of Chicago by its program, transit and pedway access, and its statement curve which fits a plaza into the block. It is a destination that has unrealized Helmut Jahn’s vision due to accumulating limitations. The Illinois Building is an intervention that celebrates and expands its original purpose and geometries. The Illinois Building is open day and night, vibrant with people at work, at play, and at rest. The atrium’s main entrance and retail storefronts are modified to open as fold-up glass walls, taking full advantage of their adjacency to pedestrian pathways to invigorate street-level interaction. A tower—a projection of the design’s radial gridlines—is erected in the southwest corner to increase occupancy and the floor-to-area ratio of the center. As an afterword that meets various demands, it strengthens the existing volume as an extension of much-needed activity. A gallery showcasing the diverse perspectives of Illinoisans and their government is located on the second floor of the original building, dedicating a responsive space for conversation between the people and the government.
Entry as submitted by: Yujin Yang, Kevin Cole
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COMMITTEE’S RECOGNITION
THERE’S NO HOLLYWOOD IN THE MIDWEST: THE THOMPSON CENTER PLAYS ITSELF The Thompson Center routinely alters its role according to context and audience. It’s a site for displays of civil unrest; suicides; films about greed, hubris, and violence; retail apocalypses; and propelling Chicago’s different bureaucratic machines. After observing decades of controversial pro- and anti-preservation efforts, the State of Illinois decides to maintain ownership of the property and form a Midwestspecific entertainment conglomerate - Thompsonwood - a film complex that takes the responsibilities of cinema to a higher agenda. This act acknowledges and capitalizes on the building’s pluralistic identities and natural genre while valorizing the creative capacity of cinephiles from across the Flyover states. Thompsonwood mediates and surveils all interactions. Its film sets negotiate new futures, push the limits of the human body and mind, and imagine new forms of warfare. Through this transformation, Thompsonwood dematerializes Helmut Jahn’s iconic structure and turns it into a mechanism for understanding the social and spatial consequences of designing utterly interchangeable environments.
Entry as submitted by: Sarah Aziz, Lindsey Krug
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JURY SELECTED WINNER
ONE CHICAGO SCHOOL Our proposal evolves the original “people’s center” concept of the Thompson Center to address the need for access and advocacy of equitable public education. Across from City Hall, One Chicago School envisions a new prototype public school focused on public policy and civic engagement for students in Chicago to learn, question, and ignite change. The central atrium space remains the main feature of the building but is turned inside-out as an extension of the exterior plaza urban space with three “green trays” located at each of the setback tiers of the façade containing educational outdoor playgrounds, gardens, and playing fields. As exterior space, the mechanical systems required to cool the atrium can be removed to save energy and upgrade costs while providing natural ventilation and biophilic green spaces for the school. A secure entry to the school is added at the ground floor retail program, and the second-floor acts as a buffer between commercial / public spaces and the school with offices for social incubators and educational foundations / co-working space such as IIT’s Institute of Design Action Lab. The school program stacks the youngest students on the lower floors up through the high school levels and tops out with adult education spaces allowing students & their families to learn, collaborate and foster entrepreneurship between the school and outside education partners. Reusing the Thompson Center’s impactful design enables a new model of urban public education and maintains a place for the people of Illinois to engage, rest, shop, and learn.
Entry as submitted by: Jay Longo, James Michaels, Kaitlin Frankforter, Michael Quach, Abaan Zia, Mackenzie Anderson, Nicolas Waidele, Roberta Brucato, Zachary Michaliska
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PRESENT TEMPER To live the built reality post-pandemic is to target socio-political challenges together. Building on the Chicago legacy, there is an urgent need to update, revise and improve for more inclusive, diverse and dynamic social norms around historical context. Architecture as a form of agency is no longer simply maintained in its explicit style, construct, or material conditions, but rather, ethically sustained through the act of citation, mediation, and participation. Unraveling pressing matters, the proposed configuration layers Jahn’s rhetoric underneath a veil of abstraction, which simultaneously renders a more coherent core as a sanctuary to gather and reflect. An infrastructure supplemental to preservation, the assembly of steel framework stands out as a new threshold, which intensifies existing circulation and refactors transitional moments to animate interactions at the convergence of bureaucracy and citizenship. The suspended meshes with visible dimensions of fostered horticulture constrains the conduction of heat, glare, odor and noise, while offering a tempered interior that is breathable, tangible, and habitable. Extended forward and outward, this intervention echoes Jahn’s original intention of “openness and accessibility” towards government buildings, by striking open the atrium, to draw out common ground for direct civic engagements at pedestrian level. In mourning for lost artist expressions, the essence of Thompson Center resides in the empathy to embody our Present Temper as individuals, institutions, and as a society – endeavoring to a still yet-to-be equitable future.
Entry as submitted by: Zhaoxu Tong, Biyun Feng
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