Thank you to everyone who participated this Spring season! We are very excited that new teams were assembled and explored very interesting topics. On April 30th, each team that had participated in the Spring season shared their final presentations. This was a recap of the work that had been completed, obstacles and wins each team had encountered, and some of the next steps the community group could engage with or continue onward as another phase of a City Open project. Churches of the Future Over the last season, the Churches of the Future group met with the United Church of Rogers Park and worked with the Pastor and staff to help understand flexible and proactive ways for the church to man
Have you ever wondered what motivated or how did the figure of the public defender start? Ann Lui & Craig Reschke, founding partners at Future Firm, did when they were invited to contribute to last year's exhibition organized by the Chicago Architecture Foundation: “Between States”; this exhibition asked 50 local design offices to share “community-based design solutions to transform underappreciated and underperforming spaces in Chicago into rejuvenated civic anchors”. While Ann and Craig imagined what kind of projects other offices were going to submit and populate this exhibition, they thought this would be a great opportunity to expand the conversation and ask what other kind of civic ass
City Open Workshop was able to welcome Erik Cempel, the Lead Infrastructure Planning Manager for the Union Station Redevelopment. Union Station is currently a maze of transportation corridors and waiting areas, with the historic Head House, the majestic waiting room that is barely used. Erik is helping to coordinate and project manage all of the changes needed to the transportation infrastructure and spaces controlled by Amtrak to make sure the buildings transition smoothly and train services can continue. There is also a planned hotel to be developed above the Head House by another real estate developer. Erik was a consultant for Cambridge Systematics for 14 years and helped states and regi