Designed to create a bridge of understanding between eastern and western cultures on the Michael Reese Hospital's former site, south of downtown Chicago on Lake Michigan, program elements included a mosque, interfaith cultural centers, a museum, hotel & apartment tower, and a parking plinth.
The mosque was given a visually prominent location in a white stone courtyard at the site's southeast corner. It is the first structure that a visitor encounters as they approach the complex. The cultural and convention center is a four-story building that encloses the courtyard and forms the tower's base. The thin, curving, hotel + apartment tower was designed to optimize views to the city and lake.
The design of both the tower and the cultural center includes a glass skin based upon a 12th-century Persian girih tile pattern, which provides a simple modular system capable of conforming to the architectural forms' complex curves.
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