Andrew Zago’s studio aimed to create alternative proposals for the Discovery Partners Institute Headquarters (DPI), to be located in Chicago’s planned The 78 development in the South Loop. The current design for a 215,000 square foot facility is by the New York office of OMA. In addition to the DPI the studio will develop public space proposals for the four acre site between the DPI and the riverfront, including a new ferry stop. A central component of the institute is the Community Education Unit which intends to “build a suite of programs to guide historically underrepresented students into CS and tech-related fields.” Of the overall project, DPI writes: “The primary function of the building will be to house the work of leading academics, industry representatives, and students while encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration between both these users and the broader public.” The building site is on a disused railway yard that straddles the Chicago River. It sits at the southern end of a large SOM designed masterplan for the area that stretches north to Bertram Goldberg’s River City II project and also to the proposed site of Greg Lynn’s 1992 Stranded Sears Tower. Abutting the site to the south is the historic St. Charles Air Line Bridge, once the longest bascule bridge in the world.
Whether in imagined harmony, conflict, juxtaposition, or inversion, every building project—by design or default establishes a relationship between and definition of building and ground. Since, at least, the early twentieth century architects have reexamined the implicit stability and politics of this relationship. This studio will explore contemporary questions of building form and urban ground—independently and in relation to one another.
term: 5A
professor: Andrew Zago
assistant professor: Sevag Kourounian
partner(s): n/a