VO: Beautiful buildings in Chicago's neighborhoods don't tend to get as much of the spotlight as the architectural superstars downtown.

But architect Juan Gabriel Moreno is determined to change that.

He's designed striking buildings in neighborhoods all over Chicago, like this Northeastern Illinois University facility called El Centro, in the northwest side neighborhood of Avondale.

Many students here are immigrants, and the first in their families to attend college.

- [Juan] All of our communities deserve uplifting architecture, not just, you know, a downtown, or a central business district, that you can create such incredible impact.

Those communities have been forgotten for so long.

VO: El Centro might cause some distracted driving on the Kennedy Expressway, but Juan says it's in that time-honored Chicago tradition.

Form follows function.

Like, that's the highway right there.

What did you think when you first saw this site?

- Candidly, I thought this is the only place it should be built.

- Oh?

- Yeah.

- [Juan] It's a place where the expressway bulges, right?

- Right.

- It's not the most direct line from O'Hare to downtown.

It puts the building in a position where it's so incredibly visible.

Also, because of those numbers of the expressway and a half million people coming in every morning, half million going out, it's a captive audience that we didn't want to ignore, and it's shamelessly this idea that the building is a billboard.

- It's a really challenging site though, right?

- It is, it is.

- Like, what are some of the challenges?

- Well, we're living through it right now.

The sound.

You know, to put a learning institution next to an expressway, not probably where you wanted to start out.

- [Geoffrey] So what did you do to address the sound?

- Well, the acoustics were the biggest issue.

And so you can look at even the base, and the way that the base is canted.

- [Geoffrey] Yeah, it slants inward there.

- - [Juan] That geometry works to our advantage, because the sound hits it and goes into the earth.

- So it reflects the sound?

- It reflects the sound, instead of projecting it upward.

So the earth becomes our friend at that point.

It doesn't send the sound upwards.

- And then you put a hallway kind of as a buffer on the inside, right?

- [Juan] Yeah, and if you put the corridor on the outside, that becomes a sound buffer.

And so when you go in the classrooms, you cannot hear the noise whatsoever, and so you're not compromising the learning experience whatsoever.

I love architecture that jolts you.

That says, you know, there's something positive going on here, not just for people outside of the community, but most importantly, for those that live there, that they feel like something has been almost gifted to them.

I really want everyone to know what's going on in this building.

That here you have a university that's investing in immigrants, inspiring immigrants to attain higher education.

That's a story that needs to be heard.

(gentle uplifting music)