“Architecture is shaped by human emotions and desires, and then becomes a setting for further emotions and desires. It goes from the animate and inanimate and back again.” – Rowan Moore. Why is it that within an overwhelming majority of urban environments, homeless communities are continuously denigrated as vulgar instead of integrated with humanity? Three students from the University of Illinois in Chicago designed a homeless shelter that has the potential to strike urgent questions about the aesthetics of “poor” architecture and even inspire a shift in approaching urban homelessness. Designed by Eric Hoffman, Travis Kalina, and Katie Lacourt, the ZEF Side Homeless Shelter relies on a city-park aesthetic to integrate the glass and steel building as a fluid union of the cityscape’s gleaming high-rises and subtly sloping greenery. The strategy to address the trifecta of “Safety, Security, and Community” is rather simple. Courtyards have often represented an architecture of community, and this age-old aspect has been reinterpreted as the primary solution for the ZEF Side Homeless Shelter. The inspirational precedents for the ZEF Side design include the Bridge Homeless Shelter in Dallas, the New Carver Apartments in Los Angeles, the Spring Gardens of Lewisham, and, closer to home, the Pacific Garden Mission of Chicago. Between these structures, various elements of design take an empowered step towards encouraging both community within a compassionate urban space–a quality that has been all but lost to the individualistic principles of our cities–and a redefinition of homeless shelter aesthetics. - See more at: http://www.ecopedia.com/design/chicago-zef-side-homeless-shelter-redefines-urban-community/#sthash.pDjlu4cQ.dpuf