Week 8: Champaign & Campustown

Week 8

Tuesday we went downtown Champaign. It was great to learn about the complex history of the town, and how everything was constructed with the railroad in mind. We toured through all of the streets, moving along towards Park Avenue, which aligns with the West Side Park. Also, Church Street is the main thoroughfare out of town, but it is lined with churches alongside the park itself. The park is beautiful, and surrounded by churches because that's where people would come after the services on Sunday to congregate. The liquor store is not too far away, so that people can get their fix on days other than Sunday. Most businesses used to be closed on Sunday (I guess it's only Chick-fil-A and the I.D.E.A. Store these days), so the park was a main place to hang out. We also saw several banks and observed that they're stoic, as is the old post office - which is now the Springer Cultural Center. That's where I do pottery with the Champaign Park District!  In terms of overall layout, the town of Champaign was established after Urbana (almost named West Urbana) and placed upwind of the railroad. The railroad track actually makes for some really oddly-shaped buildings and blocks. The diagonal buildings are a result of some old railyards, and the way that the downtown has merged with the diagonally-intersecting train tracks. Honestly, I love downtown Champaign - it's a delightful place.

Here is a huge bank in Champaign. The banks are built to be stoic and strong, as if they can never fail. This is because the banks are a governmental institution. 

Here is the First United Methodist Church of Champaign. Instead of a steeple, it has more of a tower. I also know from experience (I stayed in a whole lot of Methodist churches last summer) that they tend to like castles for the overall architecture. It's pretty cool!

On Thursday, we walked down Green Street (Campustown), learning about the overall layout and how everything is put together with building regulations and expansions of the university population. I am astonished by how many new buildings are popping up these days. Honestly, I kind of hate how huge the skyscrapers have become on Green Street these days. Coming from Naperville, I love the small-town environment that is maintained in the downtown of a city of 140,000 people.  In Champaign, however, new apartments appear seemingly all the time. We learned how Campustown has developed over time, and how some store fronts which are older than others have been able to keep their overhangs - like the Campus Florist for example.

This new apartment building was just finished (by 6th Street).

Here you can see that Campus Florist has the biggest overhung roof. Other store fronts have limitations to the size of their Green Street overhangs.

Here's an old house in a Green Street alleyway, covered up by the storefront built in front of it.

Week 7: BIF

Tuesday, March 3rd, we went to BIF to learn about LEED certification and sustainability. It was a very interesting class because there was so much to learn concerning the construction of a building to environmental sustainable codes. I've been to BIF a number of times, but never considered that the University of Illinois is planning to create every new building to fulfill some LEED standard levels. We learned that every building built these days has the goal of lasting 100 years. That seems like a nice, long time, but also I can see how it makes sense, since the church I live by is over 100 years old and still doing great!

The floor itself is 16 feet deep and has five HVAC's (things we learned about during the TBH tour). There are a number of specific sustainability goals that these LEED buildings fulfill.  First of all, they must have recycling in their materials.  There are embedded energy costs in each material.  Aluminum is hard to extract (apparently it comes from nasty boxite mines), but cement is cheap.  However, aluminum practically lasts forever and is recyclable.  All these things must be considered when choosing materials for a building. Secondly, the building should be sustainable for water. Salt-water reclamation is a future hope for some buildings on the coasts. For BIF in particular, the goal is to keep water in the ground rather than running off to the Gulf of Mexico. Thus, the streets and sidewalks/gardens surrounding are permeable, slowing the water flow down. Buildings obviously do not allow for re-absorption of water. Finally, the building should try to be energy-sensitive. The giant roof acts to block the sunlight where it is not wanted, and the huge glass wall has shades for certain times of day. The lights dim or brighten with varied amounts of influx sunshine. The deep basement is a huge heat sink of concrete from the sun. Photo-voltaic (PV) cells function with limited success because if even the tiniest part of the solar panel is covered with snow (for example), then no energy will be harvested.

A panoramic of the building, showing the huge open space and glass wall.

The roof has gardens. Another main part of the curved over-hung roof can also be seen here.

The PV's cover the auditorium.