The site is next to the North Branch of Chicago River, east of the turning basin, and is a nodal point of future development as proposed by Wild Mile. The project consists of two levels — the ground plaza level and the lower level containing various types of swimming pools. The ground plaza level serves as a flexible urban space to accommodate public activities while providing few enclosed spaces to accommodate various activities such as dining, education, events, and performances.
The design process began by studying the properties of water, as the Chicago River borders the site and is a program element. In doing so, the three states of water: solid, liquid and gas became the origin of the concept. Because water does not necessarily have a shape in its liquid state, water can form into droplets and create soap bubbles. Thus, water corresponds to surface tension due to its phenomenon.
The action of how insects stay afloat prompted the connection between surface tension and water relationship. Further exploring surface tension through bubble formation, there are examples in which a tension ring is placed through the soapy bubble surface creating a void. This research led to our design goal, which was to create a scheme that merges our concepts of tension and elasticity into the structure and design, which can be visualized in the tensile roof structure. This big idea was also explored through elastically ‘stretching’ the plaza to the full length of our site as well as the water/landscape feature which is being stretched across the width of our site.
The program is divided into wet and dry. All pools are placed underground, and its enclosure is almost touching the tensile roof structure whereas all programs not related to water are enclosed and half the height of the wet programs on grade. All programs are glass structures supported by trusses and joined together by spider joints. Because our big idea is tension, the whole roof, made of a mesh material is stretched and framed like a canvas, is a tensile structure. The roof is in constant tension.
