This project provides a visitor's center for the City of Chicago that clearly identifies itself and draws users to its location while simultaneously connecting them to the city at large. The identifying feature is a luminous resin "wall" which communicates all of the information for visitors about the city while also providing the major architectural element defining the space within the center. The facade is removed and replaced with glass while a lit translucent path is imbedded into the sidewalk connecting to the cultural center. This path leads visitors to the center and once inside becomes the "wall" into which are placed interactive computer monitors, a large scale interactive video screen, racks for brochures, display space for exhibits and the actual information desk itself. After sundown, the wall will be illuminated and turn the center into a beacon grabbing the attention of anyone crossing its path or viewing it from Michigan Avenue and Millennium Park.
A simple perforated copper screen is wrapped around the existing building to create an abstract and complementary background for the interaction of path, wall and visitor. The center simultaneously engages its specific location within the city through the visual dominance of the wall and the luminous path while the information contained therein references the larger city. Light is simultaneously the draw into the space, its identity and a metaphor for a connection to the culture of the entire city.
Visitors both inhabit the wall as a bench and engage its information at the interactive displays. Objects placed within the spaces defined by the walls as exhibits add to the richness of the experience. Here again the reflective surfaces add layers of meaning to the perception of the space. The space created by the wall and its information both serve to shed meaning on the complex and diverse culture that is Chicago.
The simultaneity of information and architecture is clearly exemplified by the reception and information desk where the receptionist or information provider actually occupies the wall. In addition, the reflective surfaces of the floor and ceiling serve to merge the wall with projected images of itself thus blurring the distinction between the material presence of the wall and its information and the its larger symbolic or metaphorical meaning. This creates an additional simultaneity - that between the actual and metaphorical. The experience of the wall as reflected on these horizontal surfaces changes perceptions and provides an alternative reading of it both as an object and an experience. This in turn can become a metaphor for the complex manner in which we encounter and inhabit space within the modern built environment.
Luminous information cubes containing computer screens are placed around the city creating a physical and visual link to the Visitor's Center through the use of the similar materials and information delivery. These cubes provide visitors and residents access cultural locations and events and create a virtual link to the center throughout the city. They become the center in the city. Thus through these devices the center can begin to add a layer of cultural organization and hierarchy above and beyond the physical grid of the city. The constituent elements of the wall can create a simultaneity of information and architecture at the scale of the entire city.
(completed by 4240 employee, Robert Benson, while at VWA)