Building Healthy Corridors

Branching from the boulevard, as we moved further into our project towards finalizing one building typology, my partner Alexus Davis and I decided to reconfigure the community master plan which we had produced during our mid term review. Considering all the graphic related constructive criticism, we developed an in-depth mapping of the Lawndale community area pertaining to our study. This study guided us to formulate the various community network cycles which we had identified earlier but hadn’t been able to envision it then.

The community network cycles we identified were as follows :

1. Community Oriented Zoning

2. New Specialized School Zoning

3. Retail and Clinic Zoning

4. Greenhouse and Urban farming Zoning

5. Affordable Housing Zoning

6. 31st and Kedzie Hospital

Besides urban farming being the gist of our project, we also looked into different ways in which the Boulevard could be designed. Therefore we identified three different types of Boulevard Design with regards to its immediate surrounding :

1. Active Transport Street

2. Commercial Street

3. Residential Street

We designed the Residential Street typology in connection to our proposal and introduced elements that would enable the control in flow of traffic , restrict the bus flow on one side of the Boulevard, proposed safe biking paths on the boulevard. The design elements that we looked into were - Bio-retention cells, curb bulbs for street parking and traffic calming. In my opinion, the “too much research” comment that our project received, supported us in finding our way through achieving the right design solution to the health corridor that would connect pieces of our design strategies. For our final reviews, we worked a 3D walk-through of our design which can be found here!

This project has been a great learning experience as my partner and I got an opportunity to apply all the concepts we have learnt through other classes on health and well-being in graduate school. The decision to pursue Chicago Studio in the final semester of my Masters Program at UIUC has been the best ever as it has been a perfect platform for holistic development under Professor William Worn's guidance. Right from exploring different areas in the city to networking with Professionals that we'd otherwise just stalk on Professional Networking websites - we got an opportunity to connect with people in every sense. There couldn't have been a better way for me to end Graduate School - our project has been nominated for the Graduate Awards for Design Excellence for our Spring Studio '18. It has been our second time working as a team and this news has been a perfect one, summing up our Masters in Architecture with a focus in Health and Well-being!