By the Book by PALMYRA and alt_

Let’s meet by the book! The “By The Book” pavilion is a haven, an inspiration, a playscape, and a landmark for Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood, its children, and their caregivers. By evoking weightlessness – book pages floating in midair – the pavilion design embodies the idea that reading can happen anywhere, at any time, transporting the reader to other worlds. Fabricated out of aluminum, the four-part installation moves with the wind and responds to the bodies that might rest against its stalks.

Hidden in the colorful patterns and in the shadows the cutouts cast on the ground on sunny days are letters that can be rearranged to follow one’s imagination. The pavilion was the final piece of a series of landscape-focused interventions on the site, including a passive stormwater management landscape funded by the Chicago Resilient Corridors project and a Playful Learning Landscape installation focused on nature, water, word play, and conservation sponsored by the Chicago Children’s museum. Together, these site interventions define and activate a welcoming, purposeful hub for local residents to foster care and connection to each other and to their public spaces.