South Works Station

Shrinking cities are a big problem in the current urban development of Western cities. The midwest of America has experienced an ongoing decline in population within its city centers since the middle of the 20th century and nothing has yet to be proven effective to turn this development around. Chicago is no exeption to this phenomenon with many of its neighborhoods slowly but steadiliy deminishing and literally falling apart. The masterplan for the South Works area proposes a new way of conducting urbanism heaviliy car-dependend mono-fucntional and low-density urban sprawl that characterizes most of Chicago’s urban areas, the vacancy strucken south of Chicago has a way to turn their ongoing decline around. Our research shows that a concentration of people, functions and jobs into high density nodes, along the major infrastructural axis that are still present around the Steel Works site, could greatly contribute to a revival of the area as well as bring back the manufacturing industry within these areas that are in dire need of jobs and amenities. The individual design part of this graduation studio, concerning a multi-modal transportation hub incorporating new ways of manufacturing forms an essential part of the proposed master plan, which is centered around infrastructure and new ways of manufacturing. The South Works station project opens up the normally ‘hidden’ manufacturing process by placing it right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the hectics within a train station. People will be able to actively follow the process, from the arrivial of individual parts, all the way down to finished projects which they can then buy, knowing the entire story behind it. In a way, both the masterplan “Made in South Works” and the individual design for South Works Station are ways to really bring all-new forms of manufacturing back to Chicago and to form an example for many other American cities in dire need of change.