While we are freely running through the fields of history picking up precedents in a truly hedonistic manner, one needs to wonder: what ever happened to generic architecture? I am not referring here to that generic sarcastically described by Rem Koolhaas in the SMLXL text “The Generic City”, but to that generic implied by Rem Koolhaas in “Our New Sobriety”, a text accompanying OMA’s contribution to the 1980 Venice Biennale “Strada Novissima”. The latter seems to be a succinct extension of Ludwig Hilberseimer’s “Großstadtarchitektur”. Published in 1927, “Großstadtarchitektur” or “Metropolisarchitecture”, is a sharp proposal for an architectural form rooted within the reality of the city. It is a proposal which argues that “the contemporary city requires a radical sobriety of form; a form defined by objectivity and economy, material and construction, economic and social factors; a form with its own laws; a form which corresponds to contemporary human life; a form which is subjected to a new awareness of life that is not subjective-individual but rather objective-collective”. Metropolisarchitecture is nothing else but a healthy form of generic architecture; a generic that is not ordinary or vernacular. It is a form established in the present. It is a non-referential form. It is the one that interests us.

This studio will work on the theme of generic.
This studio will ask the students to design a building.
This studio will be in Chicago.

Project
The task of this studio is to design a 1,000-room hotel on the East end of Navy Pier, Chicago.

Chicago Navy Pier
Navy Pier is the attraction every city wants to have. In the end, it is an attraction that every city with access to water could have. This particular site lures an average 9 million people every year. By all standards, this is the definition of a successful public space.

Nowadays, Chicago Navy Pier is a domain packed with almost all the must-have elements of a good touristic destination. It even has a ferris wheel. But it is still missing one ingredient, the hotel.

After a first phase of renovations and new additions geared towards the 2016 centennial anniversary, the Navy Pier Organization is looking into its second phase of development to the East end of the Pier. A new hotel is planned here. This is where our project starts.

Hotel
The hotel is a fascinating place. Situated halfway between live and work, leisure and business, public and private, generic and specific, it is the moment when everyone is ready to experiment. Nowadays, it needs to be more than what it has been in the past. It needs to overcome AirBnB.  

Project (continued)
Our project will not be limited just by the requirements of a hotel building. We will reconsider the entire East end of the pier which now includes the Beer Garden, the Ballroom, and large open spaces. The existing structures will be carefully assessed as part of the design process. The Ballroom, with its two towers, is an iconic presence that has defined the image of the Navy Pier throughout the years. Should it be kept or replaced?

Moreover, we will have to remember that the proposed hotel building will sit on top of one of the most public and most visited areas in Chicago. Its ground floor will be complex. Its ground floor will be a landscape project on its own. Thinking about the ground floor is thinking about the entire East end of the Navy Pier.  

Studio Approach
We will focus on the simultaneous development of form, structure, and image. Construction and materiality will be the driving forces in our design studio. Therefore, this studio will privilege working with physical models. The design project will be explored at multiple scales and constantly verify through models. The aim is to have a basic approach to architecture, one defined by the making of physical artifacts.

We will aim to overcome conventions, but only by understanding them first. Research will be carefully integrated into our studio, but rather than being a component that precedes the design work, it will be folded into the design process.

Ultimately, the aim of our studio is to design architectural artifacts that are intellectually profound and emotionally charged.

Note: This studio will travel to Chicago September 29^th to October 1^st. The trip is optional. Students will be responsible for handling their own travel arrangements and expenses. All students will be able to apply for travel grants through funding provided by the school.