Robert Crown Community Center

Robert Crown Community Center, Evanston,  Illinois

Fall 2011; Systems Studio; Professor: Peter Exley, Thomas Ahleman

The existing Community Center serves the Evanston community in many ways including day care, extra curricular activities, workshops and most notably as an ice rink at which Northwestern plays along with community skate and figure skating. The surrounding site also serves the immediate neighborhood; where residents walk their dog, play soccer, baseball and basketball.

Thus, the RCCC (Robert Crown Community Center) serves the Evanston community in two ways, it provides a much needed ice hockey rink for greater Evanston, but also provides services to the immediate neighborhood in which it sits.

The Request For Proposal requests a new center which boasts two ice hockey rinks along with a gym, library, commercial space and community space. These programs require a substantial amount of square footage and could potentially require a large building in the middle of a neighborhood which boasts 1.5 story single family homes.Also, the sprawling building and parking would severely decrease the green space around the site, minimizing the use for pick up soccer and baseball games, etc.

The proposed RCCC serves two communities- the greater Evanston area and the micro community of the immediate neighborhood. Because Evanston has the fortune of having multiple community centers throughout the city, the RCCC community space can be tailored to the immediate neighborhood it serves. With this in mind, it is important to contextualize the building to it’s immediate surroundings, by combining park and building, the large square footage can be accomplished without removing a substantial amount of green space.

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