A massive plan to drastically cut the carbon emissions in downtown Chicago has scooped a prestigious award from Architect Magazine.
The fourth Annual R&D Award was given to the Chicago Central Area Decarbonization Plan by well-known Chicago-based Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, which presented a large-scale and hugely ambitious plant to retrofit existing buildings to achieve a 25% cut in emissions below the 1990 level.
The ‘Plan’ involves eight key strategies, starting with one called Buildings, “which investigates how existing structures can be upgraded to improve energy efficiency, increase the value of aging building stock and tap into the potential to transfer excess energy loads back to the grid, all while offsetting the need for new construction.
Other strategies include Urban Matrix, which envisions increasing the residential density of the Loop by enhancing amenities, Smart Infrastructure which tackles how energy can be generated, stored, distributed and shared and Mobility, which assesses transit and connectivity.
Some of the key changes presented include:
- Completing and linking a below-grade pedway system that would make the Loop more walkable in extreme weather conditions
- Creating a green corridor and below-grade inter-modal axis on Monroe Street that would offer a place of respite for residents, commuters and visitors
- Repurposing the Loop’s underground tunnels as a pneumatic waste disposal system
- Extending the existing Chicago riverwalk and bicycle paths to increase mobility within and across the Loop
- Publishing The Green City, a textbook that would enter the public and private school curricula as a primer on urban design and decarbonization for public school students, in the manner of the original Wacker’s Manual of the Plan of Chicago in 1911-1927.
Check out some more photos below.
Tags: architecture, building, design, green
The only award this should get is one for internet plagiarism. Virtually any amount of investigation will reveal that nearly all of the information and images in this “compelling” document have been pirated from the web. The jury should have looked more deeply into the document before making their decision. Additionally, the firm’s buildings don’t look very sustainable to me. Unless they’ve been able to transform glass, it’s possibly the worst envelope material from a sustainability point of view, and every building exterior is simply an exercise in curtain wall detailing. It’s just more architect snake oil marketing and hypocrisy.
As I come to fully grasp article marketing, its success isn’t influenced by the worthiness of knowledge passed on to consumers, rather it has to do more with the fluency and simplicity of conversing that information.