Future Prentice & Reconsidering an Icon

FIRST PLACE AWARD
The Buildings are sleeping, you should go and wake them up, she says.
Cyril Marsollier and Wallo Villacorta

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The Buildings are sleeping, you should go and wake them up, she says.

Through an appreciation of the validity in Northwestern University’s (NU) need for a new functional facility and the public’s interest in preservation, conflicting interests can be reconciled with thoughtful negotiation. As is, Prentice Women’s Hospital cannot accommodate NU’s intended use of it as a lab research facility.

Maintaining the existing structure celebrates the possibilities of free space. Introducing a third entity achieves the functionality of the desired research facility. The new volume embraces half of the existing structure while the intersecting facade preserves the complete iconic image of Prentice Women’s Hospital. The black volume is transformed to include an auditorium and thus anchors the connection between all other entities through mutual use.

Because of its generous floor plan, versatility, and being embedded in a culturally rich environment, Prentice effortlessly becomes a museum. The building engages in an automatic dialogue about the value of preservation and its marriage to un-manifested concepts.

“[The buildings] are sleeping, you should go and wake them up, she says.”

– Robert Montgomery

SECOND PLACE AWARD
Superimpositions: Prentice as Additive Icon
Noel Turgeon and Natalya Egon

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Superimpositions proposes to add to Prentice. Too many buildings have been demolished unnecessarily in Chicago and in many other sites of urban renewal. This project ensures both the preservation of the original building and its adaptation through growth over time. The structural core of Prentice is exploited, extending to support vertical growth. The result is a series of possible additions, which do not discriminate based on architectural style, form, scale, program, or material. This indeterminate approach serves as a vertical timeline of trends in architecture. It also relies heavily on the modernist approach Goldberg had towards plinth and tower, and does so in order to extend square footage and program indefinitely. The icon remains while continuing to grow, quite literally, and is saved not because of nostalgia but for a valuable use and iconic, meaningful presence in the city of Chicago.

By studying and identifying key buildings in architectural history that have been demolished or added to, our timeline then leads to an exploration of what would happen if some of these significant buildings were added to instead of demolished. We superimposed the demolished buildings with what was built or proposed on the same site. These Demolished Additions led to the generation of a library of generic iconic forms to be combined in an theoretical additions to the existing Goldberg building. This additive method reinforces Goldberg’s unique composition, while allowing the architect of each future addition to compose their own distinct icons.

THIRD PLACE AWARD
Bridging Prentice
James Wild, Lauren Haras, Katherine Lee, Andres Lemus, Tom Marquardt, Pedro Melis, Saman Moayer, Kerry Rutz, Katelyn Smith, Ashley Wendela

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Our design strategy looks to preserve Prentice as a center for community education with learning labs and science focused galleries, while creating a state-of-the-art laboratory research center connected by an open green roof ‘park’, accessible to the surrounding community, in the center of the NW campus.

Prentice and the adjoining site are ideal for promoting the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education Coalition (STEM), which promotes the pursuit of careers in the sciences and technology.

The new, state of the art 500,000 sf lab building houses research labs and offices for NW, and supports the community with a needed public green space and knowledge resource center.

A subtractive design approach was taken with the existing Prentice structure. Removal of floorplates opens the volumes and creates a large central atrium to connect programs, allow natural light, and create an open terrace garden. These moves celebrate the sculptural qualities of the building and create a sequence of slow ascent.

The top level of the existing plinth is transformed into an elevated public street and park that provides the community with a much needed green space and respite to NW patients and staff, while creating an intimate relationship between Prentice and the community.

Nestled between the lake and Michigan Avenue, and adjacent to public thoroughfares, the site is often overlooked. This new program and design strategy makes Prentice and the new plaza a destination for the world and provides NW a visible signal of health, wellness and community.

HONORABLE MENTION
Project X
Anja Buttolo, Tilmann Lohse , Priska Lohse , Michael Pancost

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These are just sketches, dreams, fantasies.

All Hail Prentice
Bureau Spectacular, Jimenez Lai (Principal), Felipe Oropeza

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The crowning of Prentice Women’s Hospital is an act of love in twofold. First, it suggests that the original building does not need to be torn down – a compact and technologically advanced research facility can be built on top of the original building, and that the interiors of the existing body can be modified to fit the standards of today. Second, the crown shape hints at ideas of being regal, sacred, venerable and princely – ideas that declare immunity on the Crowned Prentice Women’s Hospital because of its indispensable values. As a gift of gratitude from the city – the crown is an insignia of distinguishing mark, recognizing the building’s many battle scars from the many debates it rattled, and debates it continues to stir. Without the debates it generated, politics of aesthetics cannot exist, and the cast of architectural characters that make up what we know as the Culture of Chicago Architecture would begin a path that veers too correct.

The Insider - Buildings within a Building to Save a Building on a Building.
CAMES/gibson, Grant Gibson (Principal), Sarah Blankenbaker, John Donoghue

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In 1975, 310,750 square feet of hospital space were developed in an unprecedented fashion. The strictures of typical hospital design were thrown out the window to produce a building that both transformed the way doctors and patients interact on the interior and to present an inspiring public face to the exterior.

In 2013, 5 million square feet were developed in an unprecedented fashion. Faced with a conflict between private interests that wished to raze a building that had lost its purpose and public interests that wanted to preserve an architectural monument, the mayor removed burdensome zoning regulations from the books in a deal that placated both sides. In exchange for keeping Prentice Hospital intact, Northwestern Memorial was given the freedom to build anything they wished on the opposing vacant lot. Wanting to get the most value out of the land, it decided to build one of everything, including the research labs Northwestern University had wished to replace Prentice with. In addition to these 800,000 square feet of labs, extended stay suites for researchers, offices for medical innovation, university commons and lecture halls, a luxury boutique hospital, and patient family lodging were all housed in buildings within the new building. Given the diversity and scale of uses the building enveloped, the building became a city on the inside, transforming the way the hospital interacted with the university (which had previously been two VERY DIFFERENT entities) and the city at large. It had nice curves too.

CLUAA, Clare Lyster (Principal), Joanna Nika

Kid Condenser In its 33 years as a maternity hospital (1975-2008), Prentice delivered upwards of 400,000 babies. Preserving its service to the city’s youngest demographic, the project proposes to develop the old hospital as an intensive mixed-use space for children --a kid condenser-- comprising a K-6 elementary school; a children’s library; a theatre; a dance room; a children’s bookstore and a café, which are all located in the plinth of the building, with a new home for the Chicago children’s museum located in the 7 story cylindrical structure. The unique structure of this part of the building is exploited by removing one disk from each floor plate to create a series of double height spaces that spiral around the building. Bold graphic landscapes--cloud; bubble; forest; meadow; spot and mound occupy these voids and act as lounges and tactile play spaces inside the museum. A museum garden occupies the vacant lot opposite. The school has a dedicated entrance off Superior St. while the other program is accessed from Huron St. The proposal combines cultural, educational and recreational program with bold colorful public spaces to infuse the old hospital site with a new kind of kid urbanism.

Kid Condenser
CLUAA, Clare Lyster (Principal), Joanna Nika

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In its 33 years as a maternity hospital (1975-2008), Prentice delivered upwards of 400,000 babies. Preserving its service to the city’s youngest demographic, the project proposes to develop the old hospital as an intensive mixed-use space for children --a kid condenser-- comprising a K-6 elementary school; a children’s library; a theatre; a dance room; a children’s bookstore and a café, which are all located in the plinth of the building, with a new home for the Chicago children’s museum located in the 7 story cylindrical structure. The unique structure of this part of the building is exploited by removing one disk from each floor plate to create a series of double height spaces that spiral around the building. Bold graphic landscapes--cloud; bubble; forest; meadow; spot and mound occupy these voids and act as lounges and tactile play spaces inside the museum. A museum garden occupies the vacant lot opposite. The school has a dedicated entrance off Superior St. while the other program is accessed from Huron St. The proposal combines cultural, educational and recreational program with bold colorful public spaces to infuse the old hospital site with a new kind of kid urbanism.

Save the Prentice Wrecking Ball: The Monument to Bruce
Design With Company, Stewart Hicks, Allison Newmeyer (Principals)

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The last design for expansion had failed. They called it M.U.F.F.I.N. T.O.P.: Moving Up From Figural Icons Now, To Overcome the Prentice. The concrete shell proved too confining.

The high strength concrete of the Prentice Building required a special steel alloy wrecking ball to withstand the force of the repeated blows. An extraordinary ball was forged.

The inscription reads: “Proceed through concrete obstacles for health and prosperity in Chicago.”

A case was constructed to protect and display the ball on its journey between the steel mill and its ultimate battlefield. People affectionately called the ball Bruce.

A parade was arranged and the ball lumbered through the Chicago grid. It was so heavy, the “float” could only turn left in loops. People chanted “Bruce” but it sounded like “boooo...”

Celebration marked the first hoisting of the ball. It was destined to become the greatest landmark Chicago had seen.

Now, the retired wrecking ball rests in a monument on an empty Chicago lot. The timber-framed podium welcomes the occasional visitor.

The ball swings, caught in perpetual motion. It traces and re-traces the quatrefoil arcs of the Prentice footprint, also the ancient Celtic symbol for luck.

Of Style Site Matter Time
Futurework, Mary Pat Mattson (Principal), Monica Cass

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This is less a proposal than a reflection concerning evaluation criteria for the project. Instead of deeming our existence and creations as finite and closed, might these be scaled at the infinite, and in their very temporal nature be tied to the infinite. By living and practicing within a broader scale of time and space, we allow for growth and change. Our lives and work evolve, as in forest succession, through competition and reaction.

Panoptic Void within Object
HouseHaus + OCCO, Martin Kläschen and Carl Ray Miller (Principals), Jason T. Chernak

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We wish to preserve the iconic architectural qualities of the Prentice; the unique form, the multiple panoptic organization and the material experience of the shell. Our strategy implements the mentioned constrains as the following parameters of demand: Economics; Increase the density of the hospital block. Urban design; Embed void within one solid block. Interior spatial quality; Increase the panoptic experience and natural light. Technical; Increased ceiling heights to support contemporary medical mechanical systems. The maximization of urban density on both sites. Stacking two thirds of the neighboring volume onto the Prentice block opens and dedicates new civic space to Chicago and increases overall natural lighting conditions. Vertical and horizontal subtractions from the block mass supply natural light and stimulates spatial interaction. A horizontal void marks the original pedestal height of the Prentice. The panoptic core contains vertical circulation that spatially interacts with the interior of the Prentice shell. The core structure consists of remnants of the original Prentice floors. Bridges mediate between these floors and the floor heights of the new surrounding hospital. These floating skyways weave the components of the hospital complex together.

Dream Garden A space for momentary release from the realities of hospital life. A space of hope, imagination and sensations. A space that recalls the romantic imagery of Turner’s landscapes and the surrealist operations of Max Ernst’s dream worlds. A space that spoils the senses. A space that lives and revitalizes. A space of recovery and retreat. A space of spring and springs. A space of inspiration through which the ruin creates a culture for its own preservation.

VARIABLE FUTURES - FROM EITHER/OR TO BOTH/AND
Kujawa Architecture, Casimir Kujawa (Principal), Mason Pritchett, Patrick Johnson, Andrew Corrigan

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Two contrary positions have been presented regarding the fate of the former Prentice Women’s Hospital: either preserve or demolish.

Advocates for saving Prentice maintain that this building is architecturally and culturally significant and that it should be granted Landmark Status protection despite its relatively young age. Northwestern University has stated that the demolition of Prentice is the only way to effectively utilize the site for a new medical research facility.

The ‘Preserve or Demolish’ debate ignores the possibility of a third option... Goldberg’s Prentice can be saved. Northwestern’s specifications can be met.

Razing Chicago
Studio IDE, Paul Tebben and Vladimir Radutny (Principals), Joe Signorelli , Fanny Hothan

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“Great architecture has only two natural enemies: water and stupid men.” – Richard Nickel

The government-endorsed push to demolish Prentice is a significant current event. Sadly, however, it represents just one in a much longer sequence of short-sighted actions. These tragedies have been repeated by a city which has all-too-often prioritized the rapid development of the 'new' over the thoughtful integration of the 'old.' Too many times in Chicago's short history, significant buildings have been hastily razed, leaving only quiet echoes of the great lessons they once offered. Many have fallen; few have been saved, but the sad and tenuous appreciation for Chicago's architectural history remains unchanged.

Our image does not aspire to answer the difficult question of how to breathe new life into this magnificent structure. It is instead a thoughtful gesture, hinged on history, meant to fuel the fight to keep it alive. How can we begin to assign new purpose to a building without first securing the commitment of its primary stakeholders? Before we speculate - before we create - it is imperative that a dedication to preserve our city’s history is elicited from these parties. They must realize the value of the treasure they hold in their hands and it is our job, as advocates for preservation, to harness all resources at our disposal to convince them. It is only then, with all parties devoted to a singular purpose, that the creative forces of the design community may be channeled into a newly-imagined future for Prentice.

Nostalgic Amnesia
PORT Architecture + Urbanism, Christopher Marcinkoski, Andrew Moddrell (Principals)

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Although there are numerous artifacts supporting the case that the construction of Old Prentice was completed as early as 1934, Northwestern continues to allege it was built in 1975 in order to thwart preservation efforts.

Originally part of Passavant Memorial Hospital, Old Prentice remains as an unwanted leftover from before Passavant (1865) merged with Wesley Memorial Hospital (1888) to become Northwestern Memorial Hospital in 1972.

If the public was conscious of Prentice’s true age, sentimentality might prevail and Northwestern could be stuck with Goldberg’s iconic building indefinitely. Northwestern is instead exploiting the fact that the public is incapable producing enough nostalgia for a 37-year-old building to insist upon Chicago Landmark designation.

After more than 78 years, Prentice will soon be gone.

Future Prentice/Probable Prentice
Tim Brown Architecture, Timothy Brown (Principal)

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Along with imagining the possible transformative re-purposings of Bertrand Goldberg's building, it might be worthwhile to also consider the outcome following its (now virtually certain) demolition.