YMCA
The YMCA is designed to act as an urban scale courtyard or social condenser for the city of Chicago. Placed between three distinct neighborhoods, Pilsen, Bridgeport, and Chinatown, the YMCA creates an environment where residents of these diverse neighborhoods can converge and interact. Distilling the qualities of plan information from historical courtyard typologies, a courtyard graphic is formed to merge these spaces so that they interact with one another. This concept is applied to merge YMCA program types at building scale and neighborhoods at urban scale.
2420 S. Halsted St., Chicago, IL
Two examples of historical courtyard typologies illustrating varying programmatic differences.
Existing courtyard typologies and courtyard collage studies.
Program types are shuffled so that hybridized spaces are generated at their juxtaposition. This happens within the courtyard spaces of adjacent programmatic spaces.
Cross-pollination of programs leads new social interactions and the development of new program types.
Looking north from S. Halsted St.
Looking south from the river.
