"The main thing is to keep the main thing a main thing"_Stephen R Covey
After the mid terms reviews each team in the studio were to concentrate on the main aspect of their proposal towards the new Saint Anthony Hospital proposal. Me and Xian filtered down the ideas of developing Lawndale's corridors, rail road edges that were physical barriers, abandoned rail track etc to studying and developing the 16th corridor in North Lawndale as a part of the Hospital proposal. Thanks to Doug King, Stantec who pointed out the commercial corridor pattern on the 26th street in South Lawndale and suggested our approach to develop 16th street on North Lawndale would be a good to develop further.
We identified the underutilized lots on the 16th street corridor and placed the functions from the hospital campus by HDR Architects. We wanted to have a linear approach to the campus design as a reflection of the pattern a user would walk through a street. The main hospital extends from Kostner Avenue to Keeler Avenue which makes about a six minute walk from end to end. The Emergency Department is placed at the Kostner Avenue and 16th street intersection for ease of access from Eisenhower Highway. Extending towards right are the DNT, Outpatient facilities and Emergency Shelters. Running parallel on the north side of the street are the Women and Children Hospital, patient bed towers. All the units are connected by bridges making the main hospital spanning four streets a horizontal skyscraper_streetscraper.
After the hospital, the first challenge was to place the other functions of the community campus along the street with the existing functions of the street. For instance when it came to merging with existing facilities, the high school and the vocational school was placed in between the existing Saint Anthony community wellness center and Penn Elementary school on Hamlin Avenue and 16th street. The second challenge was how to connect the communal spaces of the hospital with the existing community. All the hospital functions were elevated above the ground except the ED which allowed the intersection of public plazas, landscaped areas with retail spaces and the hospital campus.
As a corridor, the 16th street is divided into 7 minute walks from Kostner Avenue, the first seven minute walk will be the end of the hospital district, the second 7 minute walk ends at Pulaski and will have a stretch of mixed used development that will house retail spaces that supports the hospital revenue. The next 14 minute walk comprises from Pulaski Avenue and Central Park Avenue having the school district. The fifth 7 minute stretch has a facility for fresh groceries. The last 14 minute walk that extends till Kedzie Avenue consists of the Center for Innovation and art studios that support artists from the community. This was a great exercise to develop a corridor plan with a linear hospital and its components as a focus.
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