Research and design competition project completed in collaboration with Ritika Iyer and Cyrus Gagaza.​

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plug, play, and put it away!
Staging Life on State

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A thoroughfare once planned to be the heart of manufacturing and industry, Chicago’s State Street has long served as the city’s beating heart of capital and retail. In the 20th century, State Street cemented its identity as the cultural center of Chicago. As office demand fluctuates and younger generations desperately yearn for public third spaces, another identity shift is imminent. Is State Street’s final destiny to fade away into the background as Chicago’s once-great hollow heart, or is there opportunity for it to change identities yet again?

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Architecture for the public realm has evolved through the years, responding to rapidly developing technologies, changing climate patterns and the people’s desire for a sense of community. The architecture of temporality prompts the public to get involved in the shaping of their own space; the public is welcome to rearrange infrastructure as needed, whatever the function might be.

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This project has reimagined State Street as a productive civic landscape that can adapt to the changing needs of the city. The typically unused space of the street medians is leveraged to host a public urban intervention, ready to be customized by users for the Chicago Marathon, outdoor dining, pop-up markets like Sundays on State, and more. 

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A modular structure made of planters and frames creates an urban tree nursery on each side of the median, providing a sound barrier and enhancing a living resource that supports Chicago’s long-term urban forestry goals. Young trees planted on State Street will be relocated as mature trees to Chicago's most underserved neighborhoods, based on a GIS study on tree canopy coverage.

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The tree nursery is attached to a system of movable partition modules with customizable shading structures. These elements can be deployed to temporarily reconfigure State Street, creating shaded pedestrian zones, areas for community events, pop-up markets, and general engagement for the street. Modules can be reconfigured as needed to respond to the ebb and flow of modern life, revitalizing the forgotten landscape of the roadway median.

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Everyday materials are gathered together to build this urban intervention; unistrut metal framing members are bolted together to create the frame, expanded metal mesh blankets the base and makes room for wood veneer planters. Sawn lumber seating blocks are stored in the frames, inviting occupation. 

The material palette deliberately contrasts steel, wood, and living vegetation, recalling the industrial legacy of the Midwest and the manufacturing history that shaped Chicago and the Rust Belt. Timber points toward a new future, one that’s defined by renewable and carbon-conscious design. Within this frame, vegetation becomes the primary architectural expression. As trees mature, the intervention shifts from an industrial object into living urban infrastructure.

Rather than being dictated by corporate capital, this tactical urban insertion is shaped through public occupation and stewardship, allowing human and natural patterns to define its character through each use. With this approach, State Street transforms into a civic center and resource that gives back to the rest of greater Chicago, inverting its historic association with wealth and power concentration.