HIGHLAND PARK EVENT CENTER

HONORABLE MENTION

TEAMMATE: SEAN HIGGINS

The practical function of antiquated industry degrades, but material artifacts and form remain in huge mass, dividing and creating extensive borders in the city. Material artifacts may provide value and interest to residents, not functionally but as a relic or reminder of a powerful system that helped shape the city.

Erasure is often not possible or plausible due to the artifacts’ mass and importance as a landmark (both in a physical space and as a larger network cutting through the city). These industrial networks and spaces can take on qualities of the sublime; even when devoid of functional program.

There are hidden histories, industries, landscapes, and city scale connections that we as architects and designers can leverage as critical elements to an architectural experience. To create opportunities for discoveries of nohuman scale, space, and time, the architect must be specific and intentional at a scale humans can comprehend. It is through materiality and shifts of scale that a dialogue between person, site, geology, history, network, and city can be achieved.

Extractions or insertions of material and form/void reveal the transformations of complex urban and natural environments to the user. Interventions give users a proximity to spaces never intended for human habitation, allowing the participant to discover connections between themselves and another time, another history, another place.