Big Dumb Building
Academic Project Studio 3
Spring 2020 10 Weeks
UCLA Architecture
Big Dumb Building delivers an apathetic relationship with the surrounding Chicago Loop context by contrasting the symmetrical and orthogonal neighboring buildings. The heterogeneity of this form in relation to the neighboring urban environment, reimagines a mixed-use building to be more transparent. Instead of being unaware of neighboring offices or programs within the same building, this project provides indirect and direct moments of transparency within and across the whole form. Thus, transparency can be seen as an egalitarian way of modulating aperture and synthesizing two kinds of objects.
The idea of intrusion is expressed through the irregularity of the void that dominates and intrudes through and within the solid. This intrusion reveals discrete moments of the atrium from its elevations. All in which makes this building an eccentric addition to the existing Chicago Loop.
