For my Masters Thesis, I re-envisioned the 300,000 square foot 1904 Railway Exchange Building at 224 S. Michigan Avenue, standing at the crux of Chicago's modern-day Magnificent Mile developments and the city's preeminent architectural history. Through my articulate adaptive reuse project, I explored the role interior designers have in capturing and honoring the richness of changing meaning of a site by designing tangible interactions with past times and people. The result was an honest and authentic adaptive reuse multi-purpose space bearing evidence of the broader impact on legitimizing a space in users' minds, in fortifying memories for the survival and legacy of great cities across the globe, for improving the contemporary hotel experience, and enriching the lives of the buildings' residents.
Issues addressed through direct design solutions included the needs and desires of modern hotel guests and city-center residents, preservation and adaptive reuse, the value of old buildings and how they speak to us, and the impact of locally-sensitive development as a reaction to "anywhere estates" or fast development of the post-World War II economy. Case studies were conducted in re-purposed hotels, museums, and public centers from Musee d'Orsay to the Chicago Athletic Association to Diocletian's Palace.
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