Union Station regeneration
Chicago, Illinois
With its new program, Union Station will remain a terminus, even as it becomes a hub – a place to go to as well as through. A major transportation interchange is necessarily about the seamless flow of passengers and their transport. But any major urban intervention is also about a synergetic flow of program within itself and its environs. It is also, especially in a place with the declared aim of becoming ‘the greenest city in the nation’ (Chicago Plan), about flows of energy and resources. A strategy that combines social, economic and environmental process.
The circulation flow joins west and east from Clinton Street to the Chicago River across a field of programs, enabling entry from both blocks at street and concourse levels. From the street, the east block is a permeable and transparent feeder for all travel from the concourse. Above, it is a raised landscape that merges social and environmental functions: summer market and amphitheatre with urban forest and urban agriculture. The market flows across Canal Street and onto the mezzanine level of the Grand Hall, animating the concourse level as well, while a hotel on the existing upper floors gives 24 hour life to the building. As much as possible, activities overlap to ensure efficiencies of space and energy, and continuities of use.
The development has the circular pattern of consumption characteristic of an artificial ecology. (Wastes become resources.) External surfaces are an environmentally productive continuum, modifying microclimate, harvesting rainwater etc. This ‘metabolic’ approach is essential to any 21st century design, and although the competition was conceived in a time of economic plenty, it is running in one that requires creative plenty and material economy.
