Chicago, IL
STATUS: FIRST PLACE IN COMPETITION 2011
Lakeshore Monument
Team:
Mohamed Sharif
Felix Monasakanian
Efren Soriano
Teo Biocina
our winning entry to the Chicago Architectural Club's Burnham Prize Competition in 2011, which solicited ideas to re-imagine and rejuvenate McCormick Place.
We felt that the bravest idea for adaptive re-use would illustrate an architectonic end of life directive, conjuring the vision of a building gently, gracefully accelerating to its end. The idea was for this emblem of High Modernism and Late Capitalism to evoke a twinned interregnum - a considered, double pause in the life of the building and the times for which it stood before their celebrated end. And so we titled the proposal (Toward) A Requiem.
Effectively, our project amounted to a salute to modern architecture after Capitalism and a gentle plea for the inclusion of careful ruination as a designated category when considering (its) landmarks.