Media Student Architecture & Design Award 2018
Second Award | Category: Landscape Design
Architect: Somayeh Ghorbani
This project explores phased phytoremediation for
the highly contaminated Fisk Coal Power Plant, an abandoned brownfield in
Chicago, and its transformation into a public park
that will contribute to enhancing the quality of the urban environment, and provide a vibrant
new cultural and recreational facility for the city. Preserving some of the existing buildings of
the former power plant as a symbol of the industrial Chicago, the
project incorporates a variety of
cultural and educational programs with the intention of creating public awareness
about questions of urban nature and environmental preservation.
Altogether, once completed, this project can be an example to demonstrate that
abandoned sites can be recovered to become a focal point to help their
surrounding environment and communities in many ways.
This project’s design
strategies can be implemented at other
abandoned and contaminated sites in the USA. Illinois is just one example of a
state with a multitude of decommissioned coal power plants. Phytoremediation
will be an indispensable tool for such large-scale
issues as it is the cheapest and most efficient solution for recovering
contaminated lands.
There are three strategies involved in this project that will help
to revitalize and mitigate the site as well as reusing the existing buildings.
These strategies include bio-mitigation (phytoremediation), program, and
circulation strategies. These strategies turn the abandoned site into a natural
environment that is more pleasant and active for the Pilsen community, at the
same time boosts the quality of the environment and habitats.
However, the project will be gradually implemented due to that fact that
the site is contaminated and remediation takes several years to achieve. For this
reason, remediation becomes the core of the design, and the project is developed gradually as decontamination of
different locations within site become
completed. In other words, the design integrates the process of decontamination
with restoration to add new value (program) to the site.
The project begins with phytoremediation. Decontamination is a
spatially variable process, having a more
organic shape than circulation which takes the shape of a grid, outlining
future programming. Over time, decontamination will expand programming
opportunities within the grid. The
site’s slightly elevated circulation above the contaminated site provides the
opportunity for the site to become utilized by the public faster as it is used
for cycling and walking.
Programs will initially take place within existing structures.
These structures are going to be reused
as a community environmental education center that offers a research spaces,
conference rooms, labs, workshops, a library, and the Fisk coal power plant museum.
Gradually, outdoor programs will be added to areas already decontaminated. Such
outdoor programs will include plots where community members can carry out
ecological experiments, play outdoor sports, enjoy open green spaces, garden,
picnic on a tower. Providing an environmental education community center
invites people to learn about the natural process of reviving environments
contaminated by human activities. People will learn how important nature is and
that it must be preserved.
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