Chicago, IL, United States
This hotel is designed to be a mixed-use, luxury hotel located in Chicago’s flourishing West Loop neighborhood. Quickly becoming known as an entertainment district, the area surrounding the project is equally known for its concentration of medical research institutions, higher education facilities, and maker space incubators. Given these programs, the area has seen an influx of both local and international visitors, placing a large demand for hotel and parking, with little to no supply to keep up.
The high requirement for parking in this project provided the design team with the challenge of dealing with a potentially brutally scaled and dominant parking structure. However, rather than simply screening or attempting to disguise the problem, the team chose to embrace it, by deriving the building concept directly from the vehicles processing up the ramps and activating the façade. Locating the parking ramp entry at the Northwest corner of the site, the team was able to maximize retail frontage, while removing vehicles from pedestrian rights-of-way. Furthermore, by the time the ramp completes its first rotation, it provides the anchor retail tenant at the Southwest corner with soaring, double height space.
The project provides, not only contextually driven responses in both facade and massing but also embraces parking as a design opportunity, from which to derive inspiration. The activities of the building allowed the team to arrive at a design solution which appears to be in constant motion.
AWARDS + RECOGNITION
