International Business Center

JGMA focuses on generating energy from food waste by reviving silos and invigorating a community. Food is at the center of our daily lives: fueling human bodies, supporting a natural energy cycle, and is one of the most significant reflections of human culture. Despite this, food is continually wasted, in the City of Chicago as at rate of 55 million pounds per month according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Anaerobic Digesters can capture this food waste and generate usable energy in the form of methane gas, which could be the cleaner substitution of energy production within the city. Chicago’s Damen Grain Silo site in Pilsen, a site that once boasted massive grain production in the city has remained unoccupied along the south branch of Chicago’s river. Using the once stratifying infrastructural elements such as a vehicular bridge, the river, and aged vacant grain elevators, a new architecture emerges to suture disparate communities and ultimately connect neighbors to exciting new jobs, educational facilities, and recreational amenities. This area will mark the future of a new model for community-centric infrastructure, focused around bio-digesters, boasting a new international public market, restaurants, public parkland, wholesale food distribution, educational facilities, and a museum dedicated to a century of energy in Chicago.