Highland Park Recreation Center Addition

Highland Park, IL
Construction Cost: $11.4 million
Area / Square Feet: 64,750
Occupancy Date: September 2005

The Highland Park Recreation Center is distinguished by horizontal linear articulation. The facility’s apt scale and materials underscore a design vision that seeks to visually connect the building with the existing country club to which it is attached, and to the natural environment in which it resides.

Brick and Lannon stone echo the composition of the original building, and continuous ribbon windows accentuate the addition’s linearity, while permitting natural light to illuminate interior spaces.

The program design allows key spaces within — including a lap pool, a dance/aerobics area, fitness facilities, a gymnasium, a running track, a café and locker rooms — to be functionally arranged, readily visible and conveniently accessible. Double-loaded corridors contribute to establishing a visual connection between program spaces, emphasize plan efficiency and support centralized control.

Practical in plan and expression, the facility is not without inventive features. Dubbed an “energy wall,” an elevation in a secondary program room that lacks an exterior light source features a poly-resin sheeting application fitted with a fiber-optic light system, creating a virtual window through which natural light from an adjacent space is filtered.