The Washington Square Sleep Center is a space for rehabilitation by fusing a clinical component with a private art collection. The integration of these two complex and opposing programs in such a dense site provides a dynamic interplay between private-public and night-day.
The private art collection wraps around the sleep center, nesting the sleep rooms and technologist spaces in the center of the site. Two large courtyards separate public from private while instigating views between programs. The courtyards also introduce conditions of mutability between times of the day. The sleep rooms have a motorized shading device that opens during the day allowing uninterrupted views to the art collection.
The street wall, composed of a profiled glass curtain wall, conceals the sleep center during the day but exposes the control rooms as they become illuminated at night. The main entrance into the building is the same for all visitors; a series of thresholds open and close according to time allowing the appropriate barrier between the two users while blurring the boundaries.
Status: School Project
Location: Chicago, IL, US