Michael McAtee

« Chicago Prize Competition |

June 25, 2006

Urban Ecotone: 2006 Burnham Prize

An update following a long absence: Stephen Lee and myself are representing Digital DOA again this year in the Burnham Prize competition, where we once again find ourselves as finalists, hoping to improve upon the runner-up finish in 2004 (when Jeffrey and I teamed up) This competition deals with the neighborhood of Lawndale in Chicago which has fallen upon hard times in recent years. Once the third largest Jewish community in the world prior to WWII, this densely populated area became a predominately African-American neighborhood after WWII, but was victimized by disinvestment following major race riots in 1968. Historically and culturally rich, the neighborhood was the home of the Sears Roebuck Corp., Golda Meir and Martin Luther King Jr. In 1960 the population sat at nearly 125000; by 1980 61,500 and 41,800 by 2000. As a result the neighborhood suffered major loss of housing stock, commercial and industrial usage. See additional information about the competition at the Chicago Architecural Club site While this competition deals with the issues of the Lawndale community, the overall project bears an uncanny likeness to the program for the recently completed Van Alen Institute Urban Voids competition. See our own Petar Mattioni's entry here. There are some interesting parallels to what Stephen and I have been trying to accomplish. Our project is entitled the Urban Ecotone, as we are attempting to relate the complexity of the location of intersecting ecological systems to the interface of community, economic, ecological and infrastructural systems within the city. We felt that filling the existing voids with arbitrary architectural forms would dilute the character of the community and its graystones. Our proposal then became to reconfigure the neighborhood, to relocate extiing structures that had been decontextualized by their loss of surrounding building stock, and to recreate dense, contiguous blocks of housing. The resulting gaps produce a continuous network of green space, interconnecting the neighborhood with an alternate infrastructural system, supported by densely populated community areas. See a PDF of our first phase entry here.

woops: accidentally omitted McLain's submission with Mark Linder for the Urban Voids competition, also to be found in his entry section.

Posted by mdmcatee at June 25, 2006 10:10 PM

Comments

Posted by: mclain at June 30, 2006 08:09 AM

Post a comment

Name:

Email Address:

URL:
Remember Me? YesNo

Comments: