Alex Serbanescu - becoming-lodge

project one: 1508-1510 W Garfield Boulevard

This six flat in Englewood was converted into an SRO building in 2002 and abandoned in 2020, it remains boarded up today. The annex attaches itself to the six flat and reconsiders it as a lodge for collective meals. The annex is occupied by culinary students, the six flat their teachers. On the garden level, the annex contains a commercial kitchen, allowing the basement of the six flat to become a dining space. Above the kitchen is a communal floor: continuous but segmented to allow for gatherings of small groups. Units above have living space cantilevering off a shared utility wall. The bottom unit is sized for two people, the top is sized for one. A sunken courtyard in the rear with stadium seating implies space for performance, or at least considering the back facade of the six flat as a screen.

Located in a food desert, the constituency is imagined to be the immediate neighbors of the lodge and the people that serve them. Graduates of the culinary arts program are expected to either spread the restaurant idea to other parts of the neighborhood or become teachers themselves.

project two: 400-536 S Clark Street

The site is a block lost to time: originally the red light district of Chicago, the surrounding neighborhood was cleared for commercial buildings, an expressway on ramp, and the MCC prison skyscraper. This provocation resurrects two blocks of the old district from 1898, extending the “space of exception” across Congress street and implying further linear propagation. The historical buildings appear differentiated, but are actually connected by continuous floor plates. The linear slab behind appears continuous, but actually consists of separate modules, aligned to the roofline of the historical buildings. They absorb all residential units: the pod form of project one is extruded to the width of the reference building, allowing for apartments to be resized or recombined at will. The top of the slab is connected by an occupiable cornice that stretches the entire length of the building, containing a long table for panoramic views while eating.

This version of the lodge operates on the scale of a city: its “multiple” buildings contain a variety of care programs: a health clinic, educational facilities, physical activity spaces, and so on. It is infrastructural but not institutional, rather than top-down organization, it thrives on the additive contributions of informal actors.