commentBack to School at the Old Power Plant
Especially in urban areas, the reuse of dilapidated buildings is a crucial tool to transforming neighborhoods. A team of architects in Chicago has successfully used adaptive reuse and sustainable strategies to turn the defunct Sears power plant into the Charles H. Shaw Technology and Learning Center just in time for a fall opening.
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Completed in 1905 as one of four main buildings, the structure powered the 55-acre Sears, Roebuck, and Company world headquarters in Chicago. Sears abandoned the George C. Nimmons-designed complex for the Sears Tower in 1973. The buildings gradually deteriorated with broken and boarded windows, eventually becoming a haven for birds and rats.
Since the 1980s, developer Charlie Shaw (1933-2006) worked with the city, foundations, and residents to transform the Sears complex, using the existing structures as a foundation, into housing units, a community center, and now, a learning center.
The $40 million rehabilitation and adaptive reuse of the power plant, once a primary facility for production of the famed Sears catalog, began in January 2007. Farr Associates retained the aesthetic of the factory’s exterior while transforming the inside; the former three-story turbine room now serves as a large gathering hall while the boiler rooms, which were once used to turn water into steam, now house classrooms churning ideas and discussion.
The center is expected to earn LEED Gold with sustainable features including double-glazed windows and geothermal wells.
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