Lotus Sensor Park, A 21c Park for Chicago and Beyond

This project was completed in 2005 as an entry to the Graham Foundation call for entries to produce a new lake shore park for Chicago. Building upon Burnham's vision for city parks to serve the citizens of Chicago, the project envisioned a park that reconnected people to the environment by letting them understand the landscape performatively via a network of sensors deployed along the lake shore and through urban waterways.

The following text is taken from the project submission: Peter Raven, in his recent address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, pointed out that the rate at which urban societies are increasing in size is the greatest it has ever been. He said that in only a few years our civilization will have reached the point where 65 cities will have populations of over five million, and that if we cannot find new ways to increase the individual's understanding of the natural systems that support us, the chances of our living productive and healthy lives will diminish. We must begin conceiving ideas for what a twenty first century park must be from this position. His words suggest that any system that we produce (including parks) must meet the challenge of connecting increasingly urbanized populations back to their environmental responsibilities. That these systems must attempt to educate, enlighten, and with engage societies while providing people with tools through which knowledge about the world we live within can be progressed.

In thinking about this competition and about the design implications Peter Raven's statement, it struck me that a truly 21st century park for Chicago would require a design that had a local as well as global reach. Parks form systems that originate as publicly accessible, always available, highly distributed entities that reflect a dedication to helping people understand the natural systems that sustain our societies. The design that resulted proposed a system that was not a traditional park at all, but a deployable network waterborne laboratories that could be spread across Chicago before being spread around the globe to collect information that is of international significance and freely accessible to everyone.