Once an ecological sanctuary dominated by wetlands, the Calumet Region was altered by more than a century of industrialization. With rivers moved, dunes leveled, and wetlands filled, the land on Chicago’s Southeast side is a place of stories that intersect industry, nature, and community. 

Big Marsh Park is the Chicago Park District’s largest reclamation project—a natural landscape damaged by slag from nearby steel mills, but also a land nurtured by “champions”: generations of local activists, immigrant labor leaders, environmentalists and birders who changed the course of history in the Calumet Region. Now home to a 45-acre bike park and a series of walking trails, Big Marsh Park provides people-powered outdoor recreation in concert with the restoration of disturbed sites in Chicago’s Southeast Side. 

At the park’s entrance, the Ford Calumet Environmental Center (FCEC) serves as both a gateway and a hub—educating visitors about its past and setting precedent for a new, sustainable future throughout the Calumet Region. The 9,300-square-foot facility features a permanent exhibit, classrooms, offices, a bike repair area, restrooms, and storage spaces. 

Our design team partnered with various local organizations on an exhibition space that aims to embody Big Marsh, using the dynamic energy of ecology, equity, and eco-recreation – the “Three E’s” – as a backdrop to guide the development of the exhibit and reflect the Calumet Region’s history of stewardship and reclamation distinctly unique to the city’s Southeast Side. Made of wood, steel, and acrylic panels, the exhibit’s materials are reflective of the site’s past. Each frame showcases exhibit content, from mounted graphic panels to physical objects explaining the history of the region through eight different time periods and champions that have contributed to the region’s legacy. 

Additionally, taxidermy of the animals native to the Calumet region are displayed in acrylic casings within the steel frames. Modular in nature, the series of mobile steel frame structures can be dismantled and stowed away, or moved toward the walls to clear the center of the exhibit for community gatherings and other activities – a long-awaited space for local advocates to discuss issues and participate in the neighborhood. Complementing this is a permanent display on the marsh ecosystem is a series of 2D maps on the region, and a mobile 3D map explaining the activities, trails, and points of interest throughout the Park. 

Wrapping the walls of the facility, nature graphics of animals and grasses play with the sense of scale and serve as an extension of the exhibit throughout the space. The Ford Calumet Environmental Center is a bold expression of a larger initiative striving toward the reclamation of a landscape tarnished by industry. Through environmental education and eco-recreation, the center aims to cultivate advocacy for positive change across the Calumet Region.