GROW CHICAGO

CHICAGO, USA // ULI Hines Student Competition Entry 2017

RECEIVED HONORABLE MENTION

Team: Martin Alvero, Udit Goel, Patrick Li, Edward Palka, Rose Wuwei

The project explores the idea of using the countless underutilized industrial sites spread along Chicago as nodes of rejuvenation to allow the city to shift towards local production and energy generation. These large sites allow for plentiful food production and processing, and are often found along beautiful topographic locations. These developments would feed into each other, and move Chicago towards a self-sustainable post-industrial city, whilst introducing a new “live-farm” typology. 

This competition was fundamentally interdisciplinary, allowing a collaboration between Real Estate Development, Urban Design and Architecture students. This allowed direct input and feedback of design decisions towards aspects such as financial ramifications, zoning fulfillments and a holistic understanding of the requirements of such a large scale development across disciplines. 

The architectural strategy centered around a concept of a zero-loop hydroponic farm, adapting the large sheds towards vertical farming as the core of the site. The development that would take place through phases provided research and educational facilities to both support this core program but also trigger speculated growing demand of residential, hospitality, office and commercial facilities through time, that would help sustain the development’s financial demands. 

The buildings themselves drew on an idea of an adaptive “central courtyard”, which would house specific programs, ranging from winter gardens to parking and even incubator spaces, as required by the block. The higher floors’ south facing points terraced up north on every floor, and would also house vertical farms within the buildings themselves, bringing the live-farm typology to the residents and encouraging community participation and engagement towards the core. This community-run zone is also calculated to generated almost 15,000 jobs, feeding back to the larger Chicago city economy and encouraging a shift back towards the city’s traditional industry of agriculture.

INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITIES HIGHLIGHTS

• Working with the Real Estate and Urban Planning team members to create a master-plan that is programmatically, financially and conceptually cohesive
• 3D modeling of the Masterplan + render development through Vray and Photoshop
• Graphical representation (renders, masterplan, conceptual diagrams)
• Sectional studies and investigation of the “closed loop” system