Christopher Kelley
SITE
READING (01)
Any program
for DuSable park must be situated in its contextual contradictions:
The site
is a fragment : The site is a bridge
The site
is a terminus : The site is a threshold
The site
is remote : The site is prominent
The site
is urban : The site is natural [but of nature?]
The site
is ugly : The site is desirable
The site
is public : The site is private
The site
is too small for public programming : The site is too large to be publicly
ignored.
These contradictions
can be useful as architectural elements to focus any one of Chicago's
less tangible contextual elements: its social context, economic context,
or political context.
THESIS
(02)
The opportunity
of Dusable park is its location at the mouth of the Chicago river. The
river has set the destiny of the city and is in large part its sole reason
for being. Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable located his enterprise and lived
a large part of his life at this location because of the Chicago river's
strategic advantage. The river was survival and the promise of prosperity.
Recognizing
this, the purpose and meaning of these three acres should be to connect
the physical history of the place (the relationship between land and water,
water and season) with the construct of human settlement (the city).
INTERVENTION
(03)
Our intervention
for DuSable park is in two componants: The Curtain and The Pier.
CURTAIN
In order
to establish an connection between the park and the city, we conceived
an architectural element, the curtain, with two programmatic functions:
to celebrate and formalize access to the site, and provide a beacon point
for the site. We chose to reinforce lakeshore Drive as a barrier in a
more positive manner. The curtain is something one is filtered through
to access the site. The goal is to reframe ones view of the city by disconnecting
from the daily activity of it. Behind the curtain, one is focused on the
site out to Lake Michigan while the noise and grit of the surrounding
movement and traffic is softened.
At the same
time, the materiality of the curtain is meant to celebrate the changing
quality of the river (that is Fluid, glassy, transformative, mysterious).
In warmer months, sheets of water flow down its defining planes, and the
morning sun projects the flowing water of the Chicago River onto Lakeshore
Drive and the pedestrian bridge below. The Curtain becomes a beacon. In
winter, the snow and ice collect in its crevices and the curtain's rendering
in the sun is transformed. The lifecycle of the river is projected onto
the traffic, and the city to the west. At night, the curtain is lighted
from within, and the mouth of the river glows.
THE PIER
We reconfigured
the landmass of the park as a pier cut into the topography and finally
extending slightly into the eastern waterway where the waters the Chicago
River, the Ogden slip, and Lake Michigan mingle. Situated along the recessed
land pier, are several history gardens where the focus is shifted from
movement to stasis. The gardens are staging areas for art installations
that focus on the history of the city. These installations are temporary
to the site. The purpose of this is to portray a public history that is
dynamic and able to incorporate current events as well as distant ones.
This idea also serves to show the more complex range of Chicago's life
altering events. A single historical event, such as DuSable’s first
settlement, are then conveyed in several installations by different artists
showing the multitude of ideas and viewpoints that make the event significant.
Contrast this with the normative historical monument – the single
statue – whose multiple readings are often lost with time. The gardens
become a forum to show the multiplicity of history, in either a single
event or several events.
The diagram of the two components, curtain and pier, highlight the historical prominance of the east/west movement pattern (pier) that situated Chicago in the national scene and the north/south movement so important to Chicago’s economic growth and reflective of much of its political contention.
C. W.
Patterson chrispatterson@prodigy.net
Christopher Kelley industrialtec@hotmail.com
Chris and Christopher are beginning their architectural careers in Tampa, FL. They have a combined interest in architecture's relationship to the city, which led to a combined effort on the Dusable Park proposal.