Winners of the 2012 Chicago Prize Competition: Future Prentice

The Chicago Architectural Club has selected three winners from a total of 71 new visionary proposals for Bertrand Goldberg’s Prentice Women’s Hospital submitted to the 2012 Chicago Prize Competition: Future Prentice (plus an additional 10 solicited from up-and-coming Chicago architecture and design studios). The Chicago Architectural Club had partnered with AIA Chicago and the Chicago Architectural Foundation for the initiative.

2012 Chicago Prize Competition: Future Prentice was a single-stage, international, design ideas competition that asked for alternative solutions for one of Chicago’s most architecturally significant Modern buildings, Bertrand Goldberg’s Prentice Women’s Hospital, currently in imminent danger of being demolished by its owner, Northwestern University.

This effort was led by Karla Sierralta and Brian Strawn, Co-Presidents of the Chicago Architectural Club. Karla and Brian are also Co-Founders and Lead Designers of Strawn.Sierralta, an architecture and design studio based in Chicago. Karla is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology's College of Architecture.

These are the winning entries:

First Place: The buildings are sleeping, you should go and wake them up, she says.
Designers: Cyril Marsollier and Wallo Villacorta

Team: "A new medical research structure embraces half of Goldberg’s Prentice Women’s Hospital. Its mirrored façade reflects two lobes of Prentice, preserving the image of its iconic form. The black base houses an auditorium. The buildings are sleeping proposes the transformation of Prentice into a museum."

Second Place: Superimpositions: Prentice as Additive Icon 
Team: Noel Turgeon and Natalya Egon

Description: "Superimpositions encourages the vertical growth of Prentice Women’s Hospital. Extending Prentice’s structural core allows a series of additions, which would include diverse architectural styles, forms, scales, programs, and materials. The project imagines the transformation of Prentice into a vertical architectural timeline. 

Superimpositions includes a study of works of architecture that have been demolished or adapted. It superimposes demolished buildings with their actual or proposed replacements. These Demolished Additions led to the generation of a library of generic iconic forms that can be stacked atop the existing Goldberg building."

Third Place: Bridging Prentice 
Team: James Wild with Lauren Haras, Katherine Lee, Andres Lemus, Tom Marquardt, Pedro Melis, Saman Moayer, Kerry Rutz, Katelyn Smith, and Ashley Wendela

Description: "Bridging Prentice transforms Goldberg’s structure into the anchor of a reimagined downtown campus for Northwestern University. The removal of floors within Prentice allows the addition of an atrium. The top level of Prentice’s base becomes an elevated street and park, connecting the buildings while providing green space for the public and hospital patients and staff. A new research center houses labs and offices."

An honorable mention went to "Project X" by team members Anja Buttolo, Tilmann Lohse, Priska Lohse, and Michael Pancost.

The jury comprised prominent architects, historians, and cultural leaders that included:

• Carlos Martinez, AIA; Principal and Firmwide Design Leader, Gensler
• John Ronan, AIA; Founding Principal, John Ronan Architects
• Martin Felsen, AIA; Co-founding Principal, UrbanLab
• Kevin Harrington; Architectural historian and Professor, Illinois Institute of Technology
• Zurich Esposito; Executive Vice President, AIA Chicago
• William F. Baker, PE, SE, FASCE, FIStructE; Structural Engineering Partner, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, LLP
• Bonnie MacDonald; President, Landmarks Illinois
• Zoe Ryan; John H. Bryan Chair and Curator of Architecture and Design, The Art Institute of Chicago

In parallel to the competition, the Co-Presidents of the Chicago Architectural Club solicited visions and commentaries from 10 up-and-coming Chicago architecture and design studios to further the critical discussion.

The invited studios are:

• Bureau Spectacular
  Team: Jimenez Lai (Principal), Felipe Oropeza
• CAMES/gibson
  Team: Grant Gibson (Principal), Sarah Blankenbaker, John Donoghue
• CLUAA
  Team: Clare Lyster (Principal), Joanna Nika
• Design With Company
  Team: Stewart Hicks, Allison Newmeyer (Principals)
• Futurework
  Team: Mary Pat Mattson (Principal), Monica Cass
• HouseHaus +OCCO
  Team: Martin Kläschen and Carl Ray Miller (Principals), Jason T. Chernak
• Kujawa Architecture
  Team: Casimir Kujawa (Principal), Mason Pritchett, Patrick Johnson, Andrew Corrigan.
• PORT Architecture + Urbanism
  Team: Christopher Marcinkoski, Andrew Moddrell (Principals)
• Studio IDE
  Team: Paul Tebben and Vladimir Radutny (Principals), Joe Signorelli , Fanny Hothan
• Tim Brown Architecture
  Team: Timothy Brown (Principal)

A total of 81 new visions for Goldberg's Prentice Women's Hospital were collected and are on display in the companion exhibit “Reconsidering an Icon” at the Chicago Architecture Foundation's Lecture Hall at 224 S. Michigan Ave. from November 16, 2012 until February 8, 2013.

Karla Sierralta and Brian Strawn, Co-Presidents of the Chicago Architectural Club, are currently working on a publication titled 100 Ideas for Prentice to be published in 2013.