winner finalist finalist finalist finalist Studio Gang Ross Barney + Jankowsky Architects Brian Strawn and Karla Sierralta UrbanLab Kevin Yim The Calumet area on the far south side of Chicago is home to the 4,000-acre Calumet Open Space Reserve of marshes, wetlands, and prairies. Calumet is also one of Chicago’s principal manufacturing areas. The City of Chicago has created two initiatives with the intention of reconciling Calumet’s industrial economy and natural resources. 1) New landscaping guidelines recommend that future private developments incorporate the kind of native plants and grasses that grow in the reserve. 2) And the City has partnered with the Ford Motor Company and the State of Illinois to realize an environmental center at the reserve. The Ford Calumet Environmental Center will educate the public about the industrial, cultural, and ecological heritage of the Calumet area; it also will provide an operational base for research activities, volunteer stewardship, environmental remediation, and ecological rehabilitation. The design for the center, which the City intends as a model for the innovative use of green building practices, was chosen in April through an international competition. The winning design is by Chicago architecture firm Studio Gang. Models of the winning design and of the four runners-up appear on the adjacent pedestals; computer terminals in the next gallery contain detailed information about all five projects.