Chicago Illinois This invited competition entry for a 10,000 seat arena and 500-room hotel seeks to foreground urban space. The arena and hotel together form a contiguous volume that frames two urban spaces on site: on the south a raised entry plaza for visitors coming from the adjacent McCormick Place convention center, and on the west a large sunken urban space, which serves as a neighborhood park, and a gathering area before and after arena events. A system of deployable metal mesh curtains animates the façade and serves as a spatial device to carve out social and meeting spaces in the concourse area surrounding the bowl.