Project Description
Chicago is a vertically dense city and in the year 2080 it will grow upwards even quicker. Buildings begin to cast larger shadows onto other buildings which makes receiving daylight a challenge especially at lower floors and side lit spaces. Additionally, Chicago is overcast for 70% of the year, so skylight from the zenith is more useful. To solve the problem of daylighting, this community makerspace employs a variety of zenithal lighting methods to bring much needed natural light to its workspaces and galleries without excessively depending on side lighting and artificial lighting during the day. Due to extensive advances in automation by the year 2080 and the misuse of the technology, people do not know how to make things or think for themselves because automation overtook even the more creative tasks. The Art Factory makerspace aims to allow the community to join in together to explore how their world is made and to express their creativity and thinking through various forms of art and making. The makerspace focuses around four key production types: painting, sculpture, general craft, and digital. There are studio and gallery spaces dedicated to each production type, as well as a large workshop for larger projects. The goal is to use automation as a tool to facilitate creative production through autonomous supply flows rather than overtaking creativity. There are four studio spaces that directly relate to the nearby gallery spaces. These studios are used for producing things, so they are on the south side of the building for more light exposure. A light shelf is used to provide indirect daylighting, and electrochromic glass is used to shade but provide a view of the city. There are four types of gallery spaces on the east side of the makerspace: painting, sculpture, general craft, and digital galleries. Each gallery space incorporates an anidolic ceiling for a more diffuse daylight condition that provides uniform lighting. Display lights are used to emphasize the artwork. The workshop is a subterranean space allows people to use machinery to develop their projects. Skylights that are tapered towards the sky to provide sufficient light for the machine shop areas puncture through the top of the space. The circulation areas receive less daylight to give an emphasis on the production in the machine shop areas.