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The Chicago Union Station concourse is currently facing major problems with congestion, as well as inadequate additional services that are deemed insufficient. Already operating at or near full capacity during peak hours, the projected growth in the annual ridership of railway transportation will only bring more issues to the station in the coming years. Due to the issues on the concourse, the travelers’ experience in the station is often frustrating and degrades their perception towards the integrity of Union Station and the City of Chicago. The primary objective of this thesis aims to provide design alternatives that will relieve the concourse of its congestion and insufficient services through rehabilitation of its current form to improve the functionality of the space.To understand what caused such issues to arise within the concourse, research and analysis was conducted of the current conditions and history of the station’s facilities. The historical investigation also included research into large railroad stations alike that were created during the same time period of Chicago Union Station, between the years of 1890 and 1930. The analysis showed that much of the concourse issues are attributed to the space being in the basement of an office tower. These results suggest that a redevelopment of the site and its existing structures is necessary towards improving the functionality of the concourse facilities. This proposal will allow the new design to re-establish a connection with the city and enhance the user experience into one of satisfaction and delight.

This research examines the American industrial city in the early twentieth century and the role of cultural institutions in the shift to an urban-oriented society. In-depth analysis of the University of Chicago’s architecture and planning traces how urban form emerged gradually as an assimilation of different traditions. It challenges a planning literature reliant on narrowly-prescribed categories and qualifies recent cultural histories that give a more nuanced portrayal of Progressive Era urban culture but which fail to consider the built environment directly. The research’s critical questions reconsider the role of nature within the city, the definition of the urban public, and the intertwining of commerce and civic culture. Its methodology uses original analytic drawings which trace how the University expanded over time, united with consideration of previously-unexplored written and visual archives. This combination of analytic mapping and archival investigation on one institution reveals new insights into how the industrial city was shaped as a whole. The findings identify paradoxes in the University’s planning, which promoted the dynamism of the modern city while evoking the image of bucolic Oxbridge. These contradictory impulses were enhanced by the University’s location on the Midway Plaisance, a public boulevard typifying the urban/rural hybridity of Chicago’s park system. The result was an urbanised nature, or the charged proximity of urban density and pastoral green space. Disputing the perceived eclipse of the nineteenth-century Parks movement, the term ‘urbanised nature’ suggests how earlier concern for naturalistic landscape was fused with the ideals of twentieth-century Progressivism. The research also contests previous emphasis on the exclusionary cultural practices of this period, as the heterogeneous development of the University’s Collegiate Gothic campus reveals a struggle to balance commercial interests, pastoral imagery, and monumental urban display. More broadly, this research sheds new light on the contradictions that shaped the American city in the early twentieth century—an urban culture driven by the contentious relationship between industrial capitalism and civic institutions, a public realm animated by mass appeal and elite tradition, and a spatial order drawn from urban and rural models.

Thesis. 1977. M.Arch.A.S.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Bibliography : leaves 188-196. / Dalya G. S. Hakimi. / M.Arch.A.S.

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The study describes urban morphology and design strategies in the form of thoughts, imagination, and reality. It is a visual and verbal narrative that uses the metaphor of a Vertical Island as a viable tool. The criteria investigated relate to American cities, yet also to the city in general. The final design is the precise architectural translation of my first narrative For Elise and Forever / Repeating Islands: a Typology of a Living City, the story of a girl on a journey into her world of thoughts, fancying a city built at a right angle. The following work studies and reflects the urban qualities that are not only unique to European but also to American and, yet common to all cities. It represents a touchable and visible proposal of a healthy union of advantages and a living system where patterns repeat across time and scales. Participating in the world as a trade center, The Vertical Island PRAGMATOPIA: a Story of Translations, Real Dreams, and Other Cities brings a piece of the European city to the United States as well as a bit of the American city to Europe. / Department of Architecture

After studying modern architectural designs during my one-andone-half year residence in the United States, I have deepened my intellectual consciousness for Modern Chinese Architecture, a subject which I had previously researched through my studies in China. As a multi-national country, the United States has absorbed various foreign cultural systems, including the Chinese culture and its architecture. This has revealed itself in part through many unique "China-towns" such as those in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and other major metropolitan areas.Restricted by city planning and highway systems in the in the United States, the Chinese-like buildings in these American Chinatowns can not perfectly show the principles, philosophy and spirit of authentic Chinese architectural concepts. Rather, they are similar only on their facades by incorporating superficially reproduced symbols, responding to a pragmatic commercial need. This problem brings me to an unanswered question of how to present the Chinese concepts of space in modern architecture, and addresses the significant issues I have studied with my colleagues at the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design. After having worked both for S.O.M. in Chicago and at Ball State University I have made a new attempt to understand the philosophy and built forms of my homeland, based on this oneand-one-half year of study and new experience within western architectural design. Combining this older quest with my new experience became the focus of my thesis. / Department of Architecture

Thesis--Indiana University. / Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 391-408).

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