Pierscape at Navy Pier Phase II Design Team Organization + ...

Design Approach + Philosophy
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Every project is a response to a particular situation in a moment
of time.
The design process begins with a sensory reading of the site. Objectivity is key.
To read a site is to elicit a dialog: between the reader/observer and the place: its
history, character, context, identity, culture, conditions, relationships, memory. To
understand a site is to lay bear its logic and reveal its poetry. Only then is it possible
to configure spaces and design places that inspire meaningful dialog/interaction
between the site and its audiences.
As a team, our first priority is to become students of the space. What we learn will
determine our design of the place.
Understanding requires an open mind. Imagination demands it.
To begin with, Team X will work to clarify, simplify, reorganize elements central
to the Pierscape, removing that which betrays the integrity of the site, in order to
establish clear and intuitive relationships between existing physical and visual
elements, and to discover new ones. Given that funding is limited in this time,
we must find ways to strengthen, enhance, and revalue what is before endeavoring
to do something new.
We like to think of the Pier as a big well-loved finely-crafted kitchen table and
handed down from one generation to the next. Changing hands over time it has been
stained and etched and painted and repaired and modified to suit the owner,
or perhaps the latest trend. While its basic form is unchanged, a lot of painstaking
work will be necessary to restore the table to its original splendor: a signature piece:
product of authentic materials, skilled craftsmanship, and passion.
Much of the Pier’s original integrity and inherent vivacity is lost beneath layers
of inconsistent visual and programmatic clutter imposed upon it over many years: its
history subsumed: its memory clouded. Our first priority is stripping away the many
layers of superfluous, cosmetic, and (frankly) faddish veneer in order to reveal
the integrity and beauty of Chicago’s “big table”—where people from near and far
meet and gather and all are welcome and made to feel at home: a feast for the
senses: signature Chicago: at one with its shoreline, its skyline, its parks, its history,
its ambitions, its dreams, its hospitality, and its definitive place on the world stage.