Mine the Gap

Chicago Spire


Here's another competition, and it's organized by the Chicago Architectural Club. The site is the Chicago Spire hole.

The Chicago Architectural Club is pleased to announce the 2010 Chicago Prize Competition: MINE THE GAP, a single-stage international design ideas competition dedicated to examining one of the most visible scars left after the collapse of the real estate market in Chicago: the massive hole along the Lake Michigan shore that was to have been—and may yet be—the foundation for a singular 150-story condominium tower designed by an internationally-renowned Spanish architect, a tower which was to have become a new icon for the city and region. What to do with the gap? Whether or not the project is resuscitated, what else can we do with this strategic and highly-charged site? Once the motor of real-estate speculation has stalled, what can we use to propel ourselves, and the discipline, forward?


We're still pining for subterranean skydiving, but we'd be happy if it gets turned into a mushroom farm as a satellite venue for the world's largest annual food orgy, the Taste of Chicago.

Entries can be submitted online between March 22, 2010 and May 3, 2010.