The Chicago Architectural Club and the Chicago Humanities Festival announced the winners of the Union Station 2020 competition over the weekend. The winning team was composed of Michael Cady, Elba Gil, David Lillie and Andres Montana and prevailed over a field of 75 entries and will receive a $10,000 prize. The competition brief asked for, innovative solutions for the transformation of Union Station into a center of high speed rail traffic and related programs. It is not simply a question of designing an efficient and functional transit hub. How can this intermodal node become more than a mere knot of infrastructure?
It isn’t clear from the one rendering which is floating around the internets, how this winning entry is more than a mere knot of infrastructure; hopefully the Chicago Architectural Club will release a full series of renderings for public viewing.
A broader point should be noted that there will be more of these competitions in the near-term as the viability of high speed rail, both economically and politically, is increasing with the incoming Obama administration.