Bridgeport firm creates water recycling plan 

By Amy Rothblatt 

UrbanLab, an architecture and design practice specializing in modern sustainable design, has an award-winning idea for providing Chicago’s water in the 21st century. Instead of losing precious water to runoff or always having to funnel fluid through treatment plants, the firm proposes building a system of waterways to reclaim and purify water naturally.

That idea recently won UrbanLab first place in a national design competition sponsored by the History Channel. The firm competed against 12 designers from New York, 18 from Los Angeles, and 18 from Chicago. Judges chose one winner from each city, and after UrbanLab took the Chicago title it went on to claim national victory.

Sarah Dunn and Martin Felsen founded UrbanLab in 2000. The duo began their partnership in Pilsen and in 2005 moved to office and lab space in Bridgeport. Since its inception, UrbanLab has tackled projects ranging from renovations and industrial building conversions to restaurant concepts and single and multi-family house design. Today, the firm is actively involved in sustainable design focusing on low maintenance and environmental friendliness.

Since 2000, Dunn also has been an assistant professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Felsen has taught at the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture since 1996. Along with students from both institutions as well as engineers, designers, builders, and artists, Dunn and Felsen have evolved UrbanLab into a cross-disciplinary design team that approaches projects like a research laboratory. Their work has earned several awards, including the 2003 Emerging Visions Competition sponsored by the American Institute of Architects and the Chicago Architecture Club.

                       

City of the Future

The History Channel competition challenged architects and designers to help create The City of the Future by envisioning what their city would look and function like in 100 years. “There were not a lot of specifics, and it was pretty general and open to interpretation," Dunn said.

            A large-scale model of UrbanLab's winning Growing Water Project went on view on the main level at the Museum of Science and Industry June 8; it will be displayed for the next several months.

            Dunn explained that, in the future, water will be "the new oil" and that by 2106 "water will be the most valuable resource." According to the United Nations, the world will experience "water shortages by 2025...and that global conflict will inevitably result."

            UrbanLab’s project recommends that Chicago’s water be recycled and renewed rather than being drained into the Mississippi River after use or chemically treated in a water plant. The Growing Water Project proposes that Chicago evolve into a model city for "growing water" by creating a series of "eco-boulevards" throughout the city. These boulevards would be human-made waterways connected to parks and natural waterways such as rivers, ponds, and small lakes. Together, the combined waterways would act as a natural but closed water loop, a living system containing fish, snails, and micro-organisms that would naturally clean and purify Chicago's waste and storm water.

 

Like linear parks

            "They would be like linear parks and would have recreation space,” Dunn explained. “They could also have organic farms, botanic gardens, forests, and savannas."

Adding rain to this system would keep it from draining dry. Also, Dunn and Felsen believe that, for this approach to work, the Chicago River, which was reversed in 1899 to flow west to the Mississippi River in order to send Chicago’s pollution out of the city instead of into Lake Michigan, would have to be restored to its natural flow into the lake after the eco-boulevards are put into place.

Chicago's water, naturally purified through this new living system, would end up back in Lake Michigan to help keep lake water from being drained and minimize the possibility of a serious water shortage in Chicago in the future.

            "This is why the east/west streets are important," Dunn continued. "Because that is the more natural flow, from west to east, into the lake." Her firm needs to evaluate how much street space would be used for the eco-boulevards. "We are looking at the streets that aren't as heavily trafficked, to not disrupt the city grid too much. We are looking at what in the city could be taken out for water filtration, water cleansing, and water programs." Taking advantage of existing parks and open space would be key to minimizing disruption in city functioning.

            "We are not proposing knocking down buildings at all, which is one reason that it would be a very long process, because it would have to work with the natural development of Chicago," said Dunn. "If something got built in the meantime, that's when you would hook it up to the new water system."

            Lake Michigan is part of the Great Lakes Basin Watershed and is connected to the several U.S. states adjacent to the Great Lakes. "The whole…watershed, to some extent, is one system, so I think that when you possibly affect one part, it would affect the rest of it because they are interconnected,” said Dunn. ”People want to know how we would do it, and that's what we're working on. We presented the project to the International Joint Commission, which consists of a body of people from Canada and the U.S. who try to make sure that policy is coordinated primarily for the ecosystem of the Great Lakes, so that it is made better, more healthy."

 

Presented at UIC

            Dunn presented UrbanLab’s project at UIC the recent Sustainable Cities, Healthy Watershed: 2007 Great Lakes Biennial Meeting and Conference. “A lot of people came up and said that it was interesting,” she said, “It is really interesting for them to envision something future-oriented that would take time to develop."

            After UrbanLab won the first stage of the History Channel competition, the second phase targeted college engineering students in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, offering them a chance to define how the architects and designers who had won in their cities would implement their winning projects. Judging for this second part was held Feb. 27. Unlike phase one, which gave architects and designers only one week to come up with their concepts, designs, and models, engineering students had five weeks to complete their work.

            In Chicago, "all the teams came up with really interesting ideas,” said Dunn. “So from that we know that we can work further on what they've done in figuring it all out." Also, "now we have access to everybody's ideas, and we can start to work with engineers and planners to develop the project, if it turns out that anyone is interested in implementing it."

            When the plan was presented at UIC, “a broad range of people attended who can effect change in Chicago, [including] people from city planning," Dunn noted.

            "We are currently working on how to implement the project, beyond the engineering ideas, because it is such a vast thing," she went on. “We have the idea that you don't have to build the whole thing at one time, that it can be done piecemeal, and the difference between it and a normal city water system is that it is cleaning your water locally, instead of piping it to the city treatment plant."

The idea of the eco-boulevards and creating a "living machine" of a natural water purifying system actually proposes to put an complete green infrastructure sometime in the future, which would "disperse the clean water more evenly throughout the city," she said. "We would not cut out water treatment systems ‘til the whole eco-systems were put into place, which would take a very long time."

            For information, see www.urbanlab.com/h2o or www.urbanlab.com. UrbanLab is located at 3209 S. Morgan St., (773) 650-1130, info@urbanlab.com.