Designer Zixuan Luo has been awarded third place in Dezeen and Bentley's Radical Renewal Competition for her innovative proposal to retrofit Chicago's historic Richard J Daley Center. Her design, titled "Between Skin and Bone," focuses on integrating passive climate systems while preserving the building's iconic facade, demonstrating a groundbreaking approach to modernizing protected heritage structures.

Luo's proposal centers on the Richard J Daley Center in downtown Chicago, suggesting a complete interior transformation while maintaining the landmark's exterior appearance. The design involves rotating the interior grid and rearranging the layout to significantly improve thermal performance while unlocking additional usable space. This innovative approach creates wedge-shaped voids between the new structure and the original steel frame, which serve as thermal buffer zones that optimize passive ventilation throughout the building.

The ventilation system works by channeling stack-driven airflow, allowing cooler air to enter at lower levels while hot air exits through upper floors. This natural air circulation makes the building better insulated during winter months and significantly cooler in summer, reducing energy consumption and improving occupant comfort. The interior reconfiguration not only creates this passive ventilation system but also frees up valuable space for diverse new uses, including residential housing, co-working offices, a public library, and exhibition areas.

The innovative air voids created by Luo's design would also form terraces, balconies, and atriums throughout the building. These features would subtly transform the building's appearance from within while carefully preserving the protected facade. The graduated sizing of these spaces from top to bottom creates a visual effect that gives the building a renewed appearance without violating landmark preservation requirements.

Completed in 1965, the Richard J Daley Center was originally conceived as Chicago's primary judicial hub, housing more than 100 courtrooms across its floors. However, since the COVID-19 pandemic, much of the courtroom-heavy interior has remained underutilized, raising important questions about how the building can adapt to meet contemporary urban needs. The building's defining features include its weathering steel cladding, exposed structural frame, and uninterrupted curtain wall facade.

The building received landmark designation in 2002, which legally prevents any modifications to its facade. Like many mid-century modernist buildings, the Daley Center's single-glazed curtain wall no longer meets current energy efficiency standards, creating ongoing operational challenges. Luo explained that her proposal could serve as a prototype for adapting other protected modernist buildings worldwide, demonstrating how to combine performance upgrades with programmatic renewal to give heritage architecture new life in the 21st century.

"The Richard J Daley Center represents a broader condition shared by many modernist landmarks: an exterior frozen in time by preservation requirements, while the interior must respond to evolving societal and environmental needs," Luo stated in her proposal. "This project proposes a radical yet respectful transformation: preserving the historic exterior while introducing a new interior skin that redefines the building's thermal performance, spatial organization, and civic potential."

Luo's design philosophy embraces what she calls "obfuscation and ambiguity," comparing the effect to a lenticular image where the interior reveals itself only through motion and perspective. "The intervention is neither additive nor subtractive but precisely inserted between skin and structure, where it forms a new thermal and social membrane," she explained. "The result is not a building frozen in time, but a living civic infrastructure that is continually responsive, layered, and open to the public."

The Radical Renewal Competition invited architects and designers globally to select buildings of historical significance and propose forward-thinking design transformations to rejuvenate them. The contest coincided with the unveiling of Bentley's new Design Centre, which opened in July in an art deco building originally constructed in 1938 as a reception hub for Bentley's factory in Crewe, United Kingdom. The competition received entries from more than 27 countries worldwide, with 15 innovative proposals making the shortlist.

The competition results are being unveiled over several days, with the winner receiving a top prize of $15,000, while the runner-up receives $10,000 and the third-place winner receives $5,000. Luo's third-place finish highlights the growing importance of sustainable retrofit solutions for historic buildings, particularly as cities worldwide grapple with balancing heritage preservation and environmental responsibility.