Chicago Horizon

How much kiosk can you get for $75,000? Team Ultramoderne probes this question through a quest to build the largest flat wood roof possible using Cross-Laminated Timber.

Team Ultramodern, Chicago Horzion, Chicago, Illinois, USA. Photo Tom Harris, © Hedrich Blessing. Courtesy of the Chicago Architecture Biennial

Using Cross-Laminated Timber, a new carbon-negative engineered lumber product, in the largest dimensions commercially available, Team Ultramoderne won the BP Prize at the Lakefront Competition, a call for the design and construction of a new beach concession kiosk along the Lake Michigan shoreline, a featured component of the Chicago Architecture Biennial.

Entitled Chicago Horizon, the generous 17-meters square offers an architectural lending library and shelter from the elements during its time in Millennium Park, and later becomes a large shading canopy overlooking Lake Michigan with space for commercial vending within.

The kiosk expresses lightness at a variety of scales, from the 2,5 meters hovering roof plane to the viewing platform and vending kiosk, which are suspended from the roof using chain-link fencing without any additional supports.

The lateral reach of the roof recalibrates the experience of two extremes of the Chicago landscape: at ground level, the Lake Michigan horizon dominates, forming a line of symmetry between ground and canopy. From the viewing platform, the roof becomes a new artificial horizon, shutting out the foreground and emphasizing the floating vertical Chicago skyline above an abstract floating plane.