The Chicago Health studio has been offering wonderful experiences and opportunities for the past two months. One such great experience went by last week as we had our mid term reviews where we gained great inputs and encouragement from experts in the profession. Each team had an opportunity to discuss our proposals for the 'Focal Point' community campus design by HDR Architects for the proposed Saint Anthony Hospital on 31st and Kedzie avenue.
Xian and I have been looking at a decentralized community campus which we propose would bring an effective development potential into the Lawndale community. Our proposal's background is the GIS Map from that overlays HDR' s study area with the Hispanic Population of the neighboring communities. This allowed us to look at a proposal that could redensify Lawndale since it contained Lack of opportunities and underutilized spaces compared to the communities around it. From the map, we intended to decentralize the population from the concentrated neighborhoods by placing the Hospital functions in the periphery and on the 16th street which runs almost at the center of Lawndale horizontally containing a large number of under utilized spaces.
Narrowing down our approach we looked into North Lawndale to develop a corridor and south Lawndale to rejuvenate the abandoned industrial corridor in detail to place the different components of the Community Campus program. Our intention was to design these decentralized program proposal as communal spaces that provided opportunities that Lawndale currently lacks.
We used the under utilized spaces in the Industrial corridor for the Main Hospital, Ambulatory services, Center for innovation and the existing Saint Anthony's Hospital location for Urban Farming.16th street and the Metra rail road were the two sub components that connected these programs in the periphery. Shifting to the details we worked on the 16th street corridor development and the rail road corridor development. The proposal for 16th street corridor was to have elevated functions from the community campus with open plazas and retail stores that kept the ground plane an effective community interaction space. Below is the conceptual massing and section of a stretch on the 16th street housing the school on the elevated levels.
One of the comments we heard repeatedly from the reviewers was to condense and narrow down to a design component that interests us since we had a wide scope of proposal. Now in the studio we intend to create a linear community campus on the 16th street with a challenge of creating a linear hospital that stretches in the corridor for three blocks yet stays connected within proximity.
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