spectacular*

The Urban Oasis - spectacular* Award Winners, May 2024

The Urban Oasis is a visionary project encompassing the design of an Urban Agro Community Hub and Senior Living Integration near Humboldt Park in Chicago, tailored to the needs of the Puerto Rican community. The project epitomises an holistic approach to community development, celebrating Puerto Rican community while championing sustainability, fostering inclusivity, a vibrant living environment, and shaping a transformative space that enriches the lives of all who call Humboldt Park home.

Collaborators:

Khwaeesh Desai

Prajwal Sagari Mahaveer

spectacular Studio Award Winner January 2024

“The Flow”

School: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign School of Architecture

Professor: Paul Armstrong

The Flow, situated in downtown Los Angeles, represents a visionary high-rise building project seeking to establish a self-contained city within the urban landscape. Embracing a vertical integration approach, the design seamlessly connects each space with public areas, presenting a unique architectural concept.

The building’s organic shape, meticulously crafted, draws inspiration from the imperative to forge an iconic landmark that boldly stands out against the Los Angeles skyline. Wavy storefront façades and strategically positioned floor slabs not only contribute to the aesthetic appeal but also serve a dual purpose by creating inviting negative spaces that double as terraces and shading devices.

Highlighting the structural ingenuity, two bridges grace the structure, supported by two-story-height and three-story-height trusses that are intricately attached to both building cores. These bridges not only add to the visual allure but also house green spaces and other amenities, enriching the building’s functionality.

A sunken public plaza, thoughtfully placed adjacent to the Grand LA, serves as a welcoming nexus for public circulation, fostering multi-layer connections in a vertical direction. This innovative design seamlessly intertwines the plaza, retail stores, and a sophisticated ballroom, creating a harmonious interplay of spaces within the confines of The Flow.

Collaborators:

Chawin Wongsrissontorn

Naveen Reddy Baarla

Sree Vandana

1st Place - spectacular* Innovation Awards - Chicago 2022

2nd Place - spectacular* Innovation Awards - Chicago 2022

“Once Upon A Climb” is an outpost for the Chicago Children’s Museum located in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood, near the terminus and railyard of the CTA Brown Line trains.

“Once Upon a Climb” is a direct response to conditions experienced during a visit to the Chicago Children’s Museum. Our team recognized that the current design museum is a container for climbing structures, and we decided to challenge this notion and interpret the outpost as both climbing structure and building intertwined. The design combines the quintessential childhood experiences of climbing and storytelling to generate a new typology: THE CLIMBRARY! Rather than conceiving of a climbing structure as a discrete object or a library as a closed room, this design proposes a continuous spatial landscape interwind with climbing and storytelling experiences that run throughout its entirety.

Ground-level exterior public spaces make the building/ landscape permeable to the neighborhood and provide dynamic views of the CTA trains pulling in and out of the railyard. These open vantage points to the active backdrop of the train “parking lot” pull museum-goers, CTA commuters, and the general public into and around the site, inviting neighbors to experience the Climbrary both inside and out.

Collaborators:

Amir Zarei

Charlotte Elo

Daeun Lee

3rd Place - spectacular* Innovation Awards - Chicago 2022

“[FUN]damental [LAB]yrinths”

Project Description

The [FUN]damental [LAB]yrinth or the [FUN LAB] aims to be the typological solution to the frustration that has been building up within all of us due to stress, monotony, and the resultant health issues – both mental and physical as a result of a hectic, boring, and lonely urban lifestyle in an increasingly impersonal physical environment. We can blame this frustration on several aspects of our lives, specifically the Liminality of the Urban Landscapes we now unfortunately inhabit. We need an outlet, a physical conduit for our emotions. Art is a decent idea of expression, but it can be restrictive to some. A concert maybe then? Spending quality time with friends and family in the city? – but where? An amusement park-like break to get the blood pumping, within the city itself? – but how? A place where everyone can have their own definition of fun? – definitely but WHERE? That is what the [FUN LAB] aims to achieve by addressing ‘subjective fun’. It will deal with the increasing liminality of urban landscapes and curate an interpersonal relationship not just amongst us, but also amongst us and the spaces we inhabit through a fresh urban typology powered by the Digital Dimension, driven by data and mixed realities.

There needs to be a work life equilibrium and the [FUN LAB] is cognizant of that. Hence, it produces a mixed-use labyrinth that includes workspaces, recreational spaces, open-green spaces, and retail spaces, specifically curated for a vertical urban setting powered by the fifth dimension – the Digital.

The [FUN LAB] is proposed as an extension to the museum and arts component of the Chicago Cultural Center, establishing an epicenter for urban recreation, at the Millennium Park in Chicago! The [FUN]damental [LAB]yrinth proposes a total integration of people and spaces via technology. Drones, Big Data, & Augmented Reality, will effectively be used to address the daily needs, immediate demands, and fulfill entertainment-based aspirations of the people through a personalized delivery system by tapping into the ubiquity of their smart devices. The Static Observatory in the sky is boring. Here, the [FUN LAB] breaks that rut by designing the Ferris Terrace. The thesis is simple – decentralize the static observatory. This ubiquity of the smart device in today’s age drives the inception of the smart phone application for the [FUN LAB], where ‘subjective fun’ strives to meet sustainable permanence, hence, transforming these devices into gateways to the Digital Dimension that enables the user to not only have fun but also access and interact the performance metrics of the buildings such as the electricity generated by the piezo electric flooring system. As technology evolves, this app will adapt to the new ubiquity! Technology helps aid the [FUN LAB] to pierce its built threshold and transform not just the Chicago Cultural Center as a location, but the also the entire Millennium Park area into an epicenter of ‘subjective fun’ !

Student: Kartik Sharma

People's Choice - spectacular* Innovation Awards - Chicago 2022

“Flow: Between Earth and Sky”

Project Description

Chicago’s Loop and Streeterville neighborhoods exemplify all the different “flows” a city can experience: People, Vehicles, and Nature. In our site’s immediate context, the flows can be seen and experienced as separate. This project seeks to create a physical and metaphorical node between these flows.

ARCH 574 – Highrise & Habitat under the supervision of Paul Armstrong. This project is designed to be a mixed-use luxury condominium and hotel along the iconic Riverwalk in Chicago, Illinois.

Collaborators:

Raymond Wysocki

Patrick Dillion

Mike Rivera