LAKE EFFECT CH2

Chicago is a city built by a lake. Engineered at the mouth of a river, the city placed itself on the edge of Lake Michigan and opened up the center of the country to the rest of the world. Chicago grew into an international hub for trade, industry, finance and transportation. In 2106 the lake and its family of waterways and watersheds will allow for even more growth by providing bountiful clean and renewable energy. A newly densified city will find its population triple that of 2006, but its residents will be using 80% less energy and 75% less water than today. The city that created the skyscraper will revolutionize its form, reach and purpose.

CH2 – The Lake Powering Chicago
By 2106 the surface of Lake Michigan will hold floating skyscrapers. They will produce 75% of all the energy a city of 9 million Chicagoans will be using. The towers will be built upon buoyant bases that will serve as distribution hubs for H2 power. Slender carbon fiber structures will be held aloft by hydrogen filled platforms one mile above the lake. The platforms will be filled with H2 by a series of automated Hydrogen Collection Vessels, HCV’s. Ten miles above the lake the HCV’s, covered with photovoltaic skins, will generate electricity to collect, convert and store hydrogen while they scrub the air of toxins. The only by-product of the CH2 system will be oxygen.

The massive heating and cooling power of the lake’s mass will be utilized for a quarter-mile wide band along the shoreline and beside the flow of the river. Plug-In geothermal loops will run along the bottom of the lake and river to provide heating and cooling for the structures along side them. Geothermal wells in the downtown area will provide the same service to those buildings in the areas in between. The new permeable streets will be gently warmed during cold seasons by heat stored from the summer. This will prevent the accumulation of snow and ice.

Green Sprawl – Macro to Micro
Open space and renewed green corridors will flow across the region. As the city and its surrounding neighbors densify, more populous city centers will free up space for natural ecosystems to be restored. Green piers will stretch from the shoreline alongside newly introduced Water Boulevards. The boulevards will provide new surface area to increase the Plug-In geothermal system while also providing desirable green space and waterfront living.

The decommissioned underground train stations and tunnels will be reprogrammed as climate controlled, year round, micro-farms and green markets. Natural sunlight harnessed via fiber optic daylight collection systems will fill the once dark spaces with light. These oxygen rich gardens will become part of a regional system of urban farming that will utilize the reinvented Navy Pier as the world’s largest year round farmer’s market and green cooperative.

All buildings will produce at least 25% of their own energy and will provide space for small-scale farming and air cleansing green spaces. All water and sewage will be processed in house via natural bio-filtration reducing all water flow into the sewer system to filtered water. This reduction of flow into the sewers will allow continued use of existing infrastructure for over 200 years.

Re-Looping Chicago
A combined system of Personal On Demand Transit, POD’s, and Mass Automated Transit, the MAT, will work seamlessly with the existing Chicago grid system and provide continuous automated travel above grade on super lightweight structure. Smaller and efficient zero emission vehicles occupy half the space of city roads, donating former lanes to public spaces and bike and pedestrian paths. The Mat and POD will glide effortlessly overhead this new green band. Small, zero emission trucks will transport goods via below grade roads freeing the street level of almost all truck traffic. Automated Valet Towers, AVT’s, will present a new vertical typology within the cityscape to relieve the city of on street parking, while low cost parking at the outer loops of the MAT will allow most visitors to shed their cars before ever entering the city. A new network of air and water taxis will complete the regional and citywide transportation loops.

3D Zoning – Homogeneous Diversity
A new polycentric city region will invite former suburbs to become New Neighborhoods with the City of Chicago. Enhanced rapid transit, via the MAT, servicing these neighborhoods will allow for the densification of their city centers and high-speed connection to the New Loop. This densification will provide opportunities for increased green space to spread around and through their borders to reach Chicago’s new green corridors.

Chicago will become a true 24-hour city as the multi-use high rise emerges as the predominant building typology. Three-dimensional zoning that provides multi-layered uses for a single site will allow for denser more diversified pockets of social and economic stratification. A seamless new system of public transportation in combination with this spatially varied zoning will reinforce the New Loop as the city’s densest area. Just as today, the areas closest to the water and public green space will hold the highest number of high rises and super high rises.

Responsive Architecture and Cubic Real Estate
All buildings will be required to produce a minimum of 25% of their own energy. Self-healing materials will allow for more sophisticated and efficient methods for harvesting power from wind, sun and atmospheric pressure that no longer require manual maintenance. These intelligent materials will allow for their skins to absorb, reflect and produce energy as needed, historic structures will also be retrofitted with similar technologies that will allow for their continued presence. Each structure will enter into a cooperative relationship with surrounding urban fabric that will promote increased energy production, air quality and access to natural light for all parties.

Real estate will be based on the cubic foot, generating new spatial opportunities for working, living and playing at a building and city level. Time will add a fourth dimension to this flexible system. For example, an office space during the day could be converted to a wine bar at night, allowing for multiple uses to occur in the same space. More sophisticated live-work-play relationships will be realized, varying from the micro to the macro scale.

The project was part of the competition The City of the Future organized by the History Channel and held at the Chicago architectural Foundation on November 17th

The project received the IBM Engineering Innovation Award.

Type: Urban Design
Location: Chicago
Author: Strawn.Sierralta
Team: Iker Gil, Julie Michiels, Karla Sierralta, Brian Strawn, Diego Sierralta, Lev Zvenyach, Fieena Zvenyach- IBC Engineering, Jo Hormuth, Tiffany Danielle, Annie Mohaupt, Siamak Mostoufi, Prince Jose Ambooken, Daniel Vasini.
Year: 2006
Status: Competition