Set against the scenery of Chicago’s West Loop, for­mer­ly a ware­house dis­trict full of meat pack­ers, the sta­tion pays homage to an indus­tri­al past with an exposed struc­ture, per­fo­rat­ed met­al, and tough fin­ish­es. These mate­ri­als hold up against the unfor­giv­ing con­text with­out com­pro­mis­ing a sense of cel­e­bra­tion and inspiration. 

Con­fined by a nar­row right-of-way, the sta­tion exploits its con­straints by accom­mo­dat­ing nec­es­sary at-grade func­tions into an area equal to three par­al­lel park­ing spaces. As the extrud­ed plan ris­es, the plat­form and bridge con­nect­ing inbound and out­bound ser­vice weaves through and above the exist­ing structure. 

Mor­gan Street Sta­tion became the first new project to join the CTA sys­tem in over twen­ty years and showed a city that tran­sit can be con­tem­po­rary, bold, beau­ti­ful, and most impor­tant­ly main­tain­able; result­ing in an increased stan­dard of design qual­i­ty. With over one-mil­lion annu­al rid­ers, the sta­tion has influ­enced devel­op­ment and has encour­aged cor­po­rate relo­ca­tions that val­ue urban con­nec­tiv­i­ty includ­ing McDonald’s and Google.

Client: Chica­go Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion, Chica­go Tran­sit Author­i­ty
Pro­gram: New Ele­vat­ed Train Sta­tion and sta­tion hous­es at grade
Size: 2 — 480 ft. plat­forms, 12,500 sf sta­tion houses

Select­ed Awards/​Honors:
Vision Award, Urban Land Insti­tute Chica­go, 2015
A+ Award Final­ist, Archi­tiz­er, 2014
Divine Detail, Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Archi­tects Chica­go, 2013
High Com­men­da­tion — Trans­port, World Archi­tec­ture Fes­ti­val, 2013
Best of Down­town Award, Friends of Down­town, 2013
Patron of the Year, Chica­go Archi­tec­ture Foun­da­tion, 2012
Dis­tin­guished Build­ing, Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Archi­tects Chica­go, 2012

Project Fea­tures:
Archi­tect Mag­a­zine — ​“CTA Mor­gan Street Sta­tion, Designed by Ross Bar­ney Archi­tects“
Chica­go Tri­bune — ​“Gleam­ing new CTA sta­tion rais­es the ques­tion: What price archi­tec­ture?“
Cen­ter for Active Design — ​“Mor­gan Street Sta­tion“
World Archi­tects — ​“CTA Mor­gan Sta­tion“
The Plan - ​“CTA Mor­gan Street Station”

Role: Lead Design Architect

Col­lab­o­ra­tive Part­ners:
Tran­Sys­tems (Prime Con­sul­tant and Trans­porta­tion, Struc­tur­al, and Civ­il Engi­neer)
Arup (Con­cep­tu­al Struc­tur­al Design Con­sul­tant)
F.H. Paschen (Gen­er­al Con­trac­tor)
H.W. Lochn­er (Con­struc­tion Engineer/​Man­ag­er)
LTK Engi­neer­ing Ser­vices (Train Sig­nal­ing and Con­trols Design)
Muller+Muller (Field Inspec­tion)
OSA Engi­neers (Mechan­i­cal, Elec­tri­cal, and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Engi­neer)
S.N. Nielsen (Gen­er­al Contractor)

Pho­tog­ra­phy Cred­it: © Kate Joyce Studios