S.O.S. Children’s Villages Illinois / JGMA

The design for the new SOS Children’s Villages Illinois and Maestro Cares Community Center exemplifies a unification of SOS’s child-fostering mission with the surrounding family “villages” of the Roosevelt Square community. The prominent corner site along the active Blue Island Avenue, just south and west of Chicago’s downtown area, will welcome engagement with adjacent residential neighborhoods while presenting a positive and compelling outward image to the public. SOS is pioneer as the first public building in Chicago to fully utilize, and gained permit to use, Cross Laminated Timber (CLT). As a renewable and reusable material, it can be recovered at the end of the building life and reused in other buildings.