Near South Lakefront

For the centennial of the Plan of Chicago, this 2009 graduate thesis project by Selena Anders proposed to re-purpose a large super-block between 25th Street on the north, 31st Street on the south, Moe Drive on the east, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard on the west, formerly occupied by Michael Reese Hospital. Re-incorporating the site into Chicago’s historic grid, Anders proposed that it become the location for the Olympic Village that had been proposed for the Summer Olympics of 2016. At the center of the proposed Olympic Village was a Welcome Center that post-Olympics would become a regional library and the signature building of a new walkable mixed-use Olympic Village neighborhood. The project emphasized continuities with the late-19th and early-20th century classical humanist urbanism of the Columbian Exposition and the Plan of Chicago, stressing in addition to their traditional urban aesthetic the environmental benefits of durable masonry bearing wall buildings and natural light and ventilation.