Chicago 2016 Olympic Master Plan

Honor Award

Jurors instantly recognized this master plan as "impressive" and the result of "an enormous effort," and further complimented the "collaboration of the many Chicago designers" that contributed to the plan. The plan lays out proposed venues for the 2016 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games and was a component of the city of Chicago's bid. The design team integrated the majority of the sports venues into the city's core near the lakefront, creating a proposed Olympics site that visitors could easily navigate and reach. Outlying venues, such as the Tennis Center in Lincoln Park and existing United Center, approximately three miles west of the city's lakefront, are reachable by public transportation. According to the architects' urban planning principles, in addition to creating a compact and pedestrian-accessible site that helps create a democratic and celebratory event, the Olympic layout would focus on "reuse strategies for venues to benefit neighborhoods" and "design the Olympic Village as part of a city-scale regeneration effort." The master plan is the result of more than three years of work by 20 design and rendering firms, most of them Chicago based.

Venues & renderings

Architect

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (submitting planner)

Client

Chicago 2016

Location

Chicago, IL