Our client
Headquartered in Chicago, this client has offices in New York, San Francisco, and Paris. Studio Gang specializes in helping socially minded clients reach success in their educational and community projects. Our client’s work includes the award-winning Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, the SOS Children’s Villages Lavezzorio Community Center, and the Columbia College Chicago Media Production Center.
Project highlights
Their challenge
Chicago’s Academy for Global Citizenship was struggling to efficiently accommodate its 500 students and teachers in two rented facilities separated by a major intersection and truck route. Our client wanted to build their charter school a new building and campus that would better reflect the school’s global stewardship ambitions. This new building needed to include state-of-the-art engineering designs that would take it beyond LEED Platinum certification, using the Living Building Challenge as its guide. The design also needed to include space for 550 students, a community center/kitchen, an urban farm, and health and fitness spaces.
Our solution
To meet the challenge, our team provided full mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and fire protection design services for the new campus, bringing it beyond LEED Platinum certification. Our design met the client’s unique needs for spaces like laboratories, presentation spaces, learning stations, and play areas by outfitting each space with the engineering design it needed to work efficiently and sustainably. Our design also ensured that the urban farm could produce its own power.
The results
Our team met and surpassed our client’s goals and plans for this new space, making this new charter school a net-positive energy and net-zero waste campus. Over 10,000 visiting educators from Brazil, China, India, and Kyrgyzstan come to be a part of this new, inspiring campus.
