June 8 – October 7, 2007
“Engineering an Empire: Designing the City of the Future.” Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago.
The Chicago Grid
Imagine it is autumn, the richest, deepest, and most memorable of seasons in Chicago, as it will be in one hundred years. In this season, leaves gather in piles in parks, lawns and green spaces, and they beg to be kicked by human force and arranged by the wind to form an image of remembrance of place - and for those there to witness, it is visual kinetics.
Imagine that those leaves in their abstract, kinetic form, represent structure as it is required, rather than as permanence. This image is how we envision the transformation of the Chicago grid to evolve: where the only public land that is available, becomes available. This occurs by abandoning vehicular traffic as we know it, and a new grid of transportation and orientation becomes the great democratizer of the urban landscape. In this greening - streets, alleyways, expressways, train tracks are all abandoned for public enjoyment, and private property remains as it has for centuries, private.
New buildings are part of an evolutionary transformation, but still married to the ground. The buildings are of their time and integrated with technologies that share as much energy as they use. Those that are historic and iconic remain, but are adapted with new technology so as not to be a burden to the environment. As an example, in neighborhoods of garages in backyards and alleyways, machines for the regeneration of wastewater, and the recycling of garbage, become commonplace and replace back-alley transportation. They eliminate the need for garbage pick-up, sewers, and help reduce net energy and water consumption by 90%. With available and best use of land within the city limits, population can grow three fold without dramatic change in building density within neighborhoods, while the public and pedestrian use of land can grow ten fold by the greening of public pavement, and the abandonment of vehicular traffic. New technologies and efficiencies in living will drastically reduce the need for individual delivery systems of goods, and encourage community interaction and involvement by the advanced integration of delivery systems.
The expressways become agricultural belts, interspersed with parklands and markets, and intermittently covered with a translucent fabric of photovoltaics. The river and lakefront further develop as public domain for recreation. Abandoned El and train lines become bike and running paths. All of this is integrated under an umbrella of magnetic energy that hovers above the city and is supplied by, and borrowed from, a myriad of thousands of energy sources, none of which rely on fossil fuels or nuclear fission or fusion. This field of energy is not only used for individual and public need, but it solely powers transportation. Public transportation becomes all accessible, all integrated, all democratizing by having
vehicles operate silently above the ground and above most buildings, being able to pick up and drop off passengers within two block radiuses at platforms that emerge on need of use, and vehicles that vary in size, complexity and need. In high-rise and high-density buildings, transportation platforms are mounted at different levels of elevation for efficiency. Need for use and destination is determined by a digital matrix of communication that requires no drivers or pilots.
Just as the remains of Roman highways still make the basis for roadways of Europe today, our vision sees the grid as the historic, geo-political basis for the future growth of Chicago.
