Last semester we had a very complex project. our goal was to design a site that is/was currently a low income housing development. we had a housing and multi use (commercial, mercantile....) etc.... obviously, we had a program that needed to be fullfilled. a large part of that was creating affordable and market rate housing all accessible. anyhow it was a very overwhelming project.

my partner and i decided to do a sustainable project in which we brought wetlands back to chicago. our entire site took three major issues : social, economic and environmental sustainability. in terms of social integration we organized housing units based on the demographics of the area and people moving into the area. economically we looked at materials that were withing a 200km distance, logistics, emobodied energy....last we looked at three main environmental factors: sun, wind, and water. we positioned buildings based on sun direction and wind direction to aquire the most effecient and energy saving environments. lastly we focused on the wateraspect. we created this site that was meant to be a prototype, a system in a sense. the site was a wetland. there were three wetlands, runoff, constructed, and gray water. the buildings function and act with the site to become a system that can recycle and depend on the site functions as a whole and independent system. could go on for a while...check out the images....



this semester we are working on a single building, seems a lot less overwhelming but i think its just about to start. this project is a great project and we have a great group of professors to work with. our program integrates building science with studio. our building science professors are dan wheeler, kiel moe, and cathy odonnel. our studio professors are doug garafalo, clare lyster, and jeff goldberg. what a great city to be studying in... anyhow our project this semester is to desing a longspan program. we are designing a skate part and velodrome. the site is in south grant park starting at michigan ave. and balbo....south of millenium park. images to come...