Genesis
Oakbrook Center has been an iconic property since its inception in the early 1960s. It defies common retail logic in numerous ways, including the basic tenet that shoppers won’t patronize an outdoor center in the winter months. The embrace of the outdoors and the recognition of the often brutal Chicago winters makes for a remarkable and distinctly authentic place. Recent additions of enclosed living spaces among the extensive landscaping reinforce the perception that Oakbrook Center plays by a separate set of rules and dares the designers and architects to create added value while preserving the magic of place.
The Gardens
Our initial scheme takes its cue directly from the neighborhoods and their landscape differentiation and creates a series of new mixed use realms. The formal arrangement of spaces takes advantage of the existing axis created by the open air districts and overlays new uses to further densify and add constituencies to the property. The new neighborhoods are discernible by form as Living, Working, Staying and Playing and connected by pedestrian-friendly gardens and streets. This scheme is site specific, unique to Oakbrook and directly and organically enhances the recent improvements. The access to the center retains its current configuration and parking is resolved in a series of above and below grade structured decks.
The Vertical Village
This scheme creates a matrix for building typologies that could a) reduce the footprint of the program area, b) recognize the ideal footprints for office, residential, hospitality and c) create a very unique retail experience that takes advantage of the juxtaposition of the formal building blocks. By isolating the program to the primary corner of this site, the Vertical Village preserves land for future development but relies on a single-phase build-out for both efficiency and a parking balance in above grade decks
High Street
The most fully realized of our schemes, High Street creates added value to the shopping machine of Oakbrook Center by utilizing the existing ring road as a new High Street experience similar to great mixed-use streets from Michigan Avenue in Chicago to Kensington Road in London to the Ringstrasse in Vienna, Austria. By utilizing an existing asset in the circulation system, the program areas are a) flexible in their phasing, b) self-sufficient in the parking supply, c) respectful and protective of the pedestrian shopping center and d) attractive to an urban customer, office worker and resident who want to stay in the leafy suburbs but experience a controlled flavor of the City.
Board 5
The regional shopping center occupies a unique place in the built environment. Decades of development have created a formal language of building type that is both challenging from an urban standpoint and valuable as a land bank for future development. We took the GGP portfolio and diagrammed and categorized the morphology to find applicable lessons from Oakbrook. What might our exercise at Oakbrook Center tell us about the potential of the many other mall sites, and how might we apply our solution to the most applicable properties? Malls might be islands, but their future success lies in the ability to intergrate and modify that model into a flexible diagram for investment and growth.
