Chicago Park District Headquarters. Photo © James Florio

Choosing a cover is not always straightforward, but sometimes you just have a slam dunk. The building on the cover of this month’s issue is designed by John Ronan Architects (JRA). This new headquarters for the Chicago Park District incorporates a park and field house—with one of the most luxe basketball courts I’ve ever seen—for the community, on a former brownfield site. The community in this case is the Brighton Park neighborhood in the city’s southwest side, where nearly a quarter of the population lives in poverty. Embracing circularity in design in more ways than one, the architect clad the round structure in reclaimed brick from demolished local industrial facilities. By using that common brick that’s ubiquitous throughout the city, Ronan at the same time roots the headquarters in Chicago building culture. In short, it’s a project that gets a lot of things right—and it does so by leading with architecture. From formal, spatial, and material perspectives, it’s a masterful work.