3 ACRES ON THE LAKE: DuSable Park Proposal Project
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| photo credit: Chih-Hsuan Lee |
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
"3 Acres on the Lake" is soliciting speculative proposals for a small plot of public land.
DuSable Park sits at the mouth of the Chicago River in downtown Chicago.
This tiny plot has escaped development due to the 1972 Lakefront Protection Act forbidding commercial development east of Lake Shore Drive. It remains an isolated, overgrown meadow, at the tip of a privately owned, commercially developed, peninsula, and is virtually inaccessible except by trespassing on private land.
Plans have been drawn up since 1987 to develop it into a park commemorating the Haitian/French explorer, Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, the first settler in Chicago, but the park´s development has been repeatedly postponed. Hanging in limbo, the romantically neglected, highly visible, but practically inaccessible, site presents an irresistible temptation to imagine what could be there.
We are collecting visionary ideas for how this public land might be used. We are looking for proposals that express the diversity of interests, backgrounds, philosophies, creativity, and concerns of Chicago residents, and for proposals from outside Chicago and internationally that recognize this opportunity as a forum to engage questions about public space, urban landscapes, and/or commemorative histories. The particular attributes, historic dedication, and temporarily suspended status of DuSable Park create a productive opportunity to consider alternatives to homogenized planning decisions prioritizing safety and access, and to elicit creative ideas from those not usually asked about the use of public land.
Proposals will be presented in an exhibition and the collected works published as a book. This project is not affiliated with the Chicago Park District or the City of Chicago, and there is no obligation to implement any of the proposals. There are no prizes; recognition will be offered through exhibition and publication. This project differs from a design competition, practical or speculative, in that the purpose is not to select the best solution but to generate many.
return to original proposal page