The Badlands

A Deserted Retreat

As a spa, hospital, hotel, and fitness center, the Badlands functions as a contemporary version of a reformation park. The massive structure has an array of shared programs, all focusing on different elements of health - be it mental, physical, social, emotional, or personal. Like the reformation parks before it, the Badlands uses leisure and recreation to bolster up community development, social skills, self-worth, and to answer the call to excess freetime.

Located on the southern side of Chicago’s lakeshore, the Badlands functions as the segue from city to lake, and vice versa. It is a mat building composed of the necessary spaces and programs of a hospital and hotel, but starts to crumble and give way to the corrosion of an artificial landscape. Depending on the program of an area and how it helps one’s character, a different landscape severely chisels away at the original form. The resulting structure becomes a landscape in itself, doubling as both public circulation and outdoor pockets of privacy.

Within the interior, the private zones of each program remain isolated, but it is through recreation that they all begin to connect. Gymnasiums, saunas, pools, and rehabilitation centers blend into one another, connecting each program into one universal health center.