Casa Querétaro

Casa Querétaro is a winning competition proposal for a multiple unit rental-affordable housing project located in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. The completed project is certified LEED for Homes Platinum and consists of 45 affordable units organized around a landscaped courtyard. In order to maximize accessibility with 100% visitability, the project was planned as a single building. The singular form, conceived as a structured ribbon organized to embrace a common courtyard, gestures toward the corner and addresses the scale of each street frontage uniquely. On Damen, where there is less pedestrian activity and heavier traffic, the building is further set back, and angles away from the rail yard to face units back to the neighborhood, simultaneously minimizing sound impact from passing trains. On 17th Street, the building regularizes itself to run parallel to the street forming a continuous streetscape. Planar material changes and building volumes vary in scale from 2 to 4 stories to echo the scale and materials that make up the housing stock of the surrounding neighborhood. A single loaded corridor provides an acoustical buffer to the railroad right-of-way, while framing views out to the courtyard, as well as to the surrounding urban context, visually connecting the residents to the exterior.