NaCl Prairie

Matthew Callo
M LA, , 2019

The NaCl Prairie is a design proposal for a West Town, Chicago capped-landfill site that stores rock salt for city's de-icing applications, and proposes a partnership between Chicago Parks, Chicago Streets and Sanitation, and a for-profit urban agriculture venture. The NaCl Prairie acts as a green roof park over a salt storage municipal facility, activating the site as a more natural and community incorporated landscape infrastructure. While utility operations are often a target of NIMBY complaints, this would provide precedent to incorporate such facilities in an aesthetic manner that adds ecological, economical, and social value to the communities they occupy.