The Sun Guide Center is a live-work facility and performance space whose design concept is drawn from the poetry of Jimmy Santiago Baca. Baca's words, "The sun will guide you in a special way and bless you with its power of vision" gave rise to a project defined by its relationship to the sun. The site, located in an alley system in the West Loop of Chicago, demanded a need for a building on a plinth, providing increased access to sunlight, movement of traffic below, and privacy for the family inhabiting it.