Complete coverage of new North Campus residence hall

The images:

They are all SGA images, some pulled from the SGA site and others from UChicago’s feature. The two fuzzy pics are screenshots I took during the live webcast of the presentation.

Model

Model

Model 3

Campus North

Landscape Plan

NE Corner/Portal Plaza

S. University Ave

View of Crown

View from Smart

View from bridge

Courtyard

Community Commons

Community Commons

Dining hall exterior

Dining hall

House hub

Reading Room

The facts: The new North Campus residence hall (Studio Gang Architects (SGA), expected Fall 2016) promises to house about 800 students, which is 550 more students than were accommodated by Pierce Hall which it replaces. (As everyone knows, Pierce was falling apart and after the famous exploding toilet incident received local news coverage, the University was quick to declare that Pierce had reached the end of its useful life and would be replaced.) These students will be housed in singles, doubles, and South-style apartment units. Like South Campus Residence Hall (Goody Clancy & Associates, 2009), the building will be separated into two units with two Residence Masters and four Houses each. Each House will have a 3-story “hub,” which I will discuss in greater detail later. Unlike South, the building is three blocks (more like Max Palevsky Commons, Ricardo Legorreta, 2000), not one big block, although the blocks are connected.

The complex will cost an estimated $148 million. South Campus Residence Hall, which opened in 2009, cost significantly less at $100 million. Like South does for South Campus, the project is supposed to anchor North Campus and is being called “Campus North Residence Hall” (at least it’s called that on Studio Gang’s website), presumably until a big donor is found. The complex will be comprised of three main structures, a 15-story building along 55th Street, an 11-story building making a diagonal from East to West in the middle of the block, and a 5-story building along S. University Avenue. The buildings are connected by a lounge structure and the dining commons, topped by a green roof. (They’re shooting for LEED Gold.) The 15-story building is 165 feet tall and will have impressive views of the lake and the Downtown skyline. The best way to get a feel of the new residence hall is to watch this video.

Associate VP for Facilities and University Architect Steve Wiesenthal said at the unveiling that SGA won the job over 15 other firms. Mortenson Construction is SGA’s construction partner for the project. It appears that the lead designer is the firm’s founder and principal, Jeanne Gang (pronounced like “genie,” not “Jean”). Her best known work is the undulating, 859-feet mixed use residential tower “Aqua” in the Lakeshore East development downtown. As was discussed at the project’s unveiling this afternoon, SGA is working on two projects in Hyde Park for client Antheus Capital aka Silliman Group aka MAC Properties: the renovation of the Shoreland, the former hotel that became a UChicago residence hall and is now being converted into apartments; and “City Hyde Park,” a mixed use residential development on S. Lake Park Avenue and 51st Street (the Whole Foods that everyone is wishing were a Trader Joe’s is a part of this development). This will be the firm’s first dormitory–hopefully the rooms will be big enough! If students only cared about nice architecture, they would all want to live in Snell or BJ instead of Max or South.

Since the complex has to accommodate many more students than Pierce, it takes up a much bigger site. (The original plans for Pierce had been nearly as ambitious and included a twin tower to the West which was obviously never built.) Gone is North Field which is being replaced by a new field to be built on 61st Street between S. Kimbark and S. Woodlawn Avenues. Also gone is the car access to 56th Street via S. Greenwood Avenue! A portion of Greenwood south of 55th Street up until the entrance to the Campus North Parking Garage (Cesar Pelli & Associates, 2001) will remain, but there is no reason to use it except to access that parking garage or the parking for the residence halls which is hidden under a green roof.

The name “Pierce” is likely to disappear, but the VP for Campus Life and Student Services Karen Warren Coleman said that there will be talks with students to figure out how to “honor” Pierce’s house names. Whoever makes the gift to name this complex cannot possibly top the philanthropic flair of Stanley R. Pierce who literally buried part of his gift in the form of antique gold coins. The vague directions he left before he died, discovered in a safe deposit box by his estate’s lawyers, led to a long treasure hunt. Eventually, all of the treasure was found.

The design: It is sort of unfair to review a project based off of renderings, but my first thought was, “it’s no ‘Aqua,’ but it’s way better than South.” My other thought was, “it’s not a glass box!” Gang has made an honest effort to avoid giving the campus another ephemeral glass building that will look old in ten years. In a funny way, the structure incorporates many design elements from early Modernism: the use of concrete as the primary material (by the way, the concrete will blend in nicely with the campus’s Indiana limestone but, alas, is not Indiana limestone–imagine the cost if it were!); the situation of the buildings in a parklike environment; and the inclusion of a plaza called the “Portal Plaza” on the block’s Northeast corner. At the unveiling presentation, Jeanne Gang described this plaza as the “campus’s new front door.” But seriously, when was the last time since the 1970s that an architect used the term “plaza” without referring to a shopping mall?

However, unlike much American midcentury urban architecture which was also “set back” behind “plazas” in order to create safe havens within dangerous cities, Gang’s dorm has the exact opposite purpose. The University is very conscious of its sensitive relationship with the community and the history behind it. Pierce Hall was built amid a gigantic University-sponsored “urban renewal” project that tore up 55th Street and its numerous bars and jazz clubs and replaced many “high-density” Hyde Park apartment buildings with “low-density” row houses plus two towers (the terrific, International style University Park Condominiums by I.M. Pei, 1961) that concentrated high-density living in one area. Some have credited the project with saving Hyde Park from the fate that befell most of the South Side, but the urban renewal project is also remembered and criticized for its class and race implications. (The context was American suburbanization and whites’ “flight” from cities.)

Pierce Hall opened to good reviews–even in 2006 critic Jay Pridmore admiringly noted the architect’s unconventional choice of bay windows and said that the interior layout “remains unfailingly interesting”–but as time went on students and critics alike pointed out that the large brick wall along 55th Street and the way in which the tower is raised above street level were unambiguous signs that the University was demarcating a campus-neighborhood divide (“keeping locals out”). Of course, it is easy for us today to criticize the way Pierce’s design responded to safety concerns because cities are far safer now than they were in the 1960s and 70s. (I suggested in the preceding post that Pierce’s fortresslike elements may have been partly a product of widespread Cold War fears in addition to the fear that America’s cities were becoming lawless slums.) Gang’s design is a clear indication that the University wishes to distance itself from the urban renewal era.

Is the design successful in welcoming South Siders into UChicago’s campus? We shall have to see, but I think so. The “Portal Plaza” looks welcoming and is unabashedly urban. It reminds me of midcentury plazas such as the Daley Center’s or even the plaza for the Hyde Park Shopping Center on 55th Street that have been truly embraced by communities as public gathering spaces, as opposed to the many corporate plazas that turn their back to the street. The promised retail space will provide a genuine possibility for non-affiliated community members to interact with students. Furthermore, the diagonal walkway that starts at 55th and University and plunges into the heart of North Campus, by the Smart Art Museum’s entrance, is a perfect way for visitors to the University or the museum to have their first experience be a walk through a center of student life. In the presentation, Gang said that in addition to “inviting the community in,” her Portal Plaza and diagonal pathway will encourage students and University people to “extend out.” I don’t see why it would not. Even right now UChicago students make frequent use of that part of 55th Street, whether waiting for the bus to the Green or Red Line or heading to Woodlawn Tap for a few beers with friends.

So besides its being the anti-Pierce, what else is there to say about the design? Well, unlike Max it does not pretend that the campus’s brooding Collegiate Gothic style does not exist. It references the Gothic with its window framing. In the presentation, Gang put it this way:  her windows have Gothic-style “tracery,” giving her facades “depth” in the same way as, for example, Rosenwald Hall. It also seems to take a cue from Regenstein Library in its effort to mimic the verticality of Gothic windows and the Gothic style’s unique play of light and shadow. Regenstein Library was designed by Walter Netsch, whose Cadet Chapel at Air Force Academy Gang’s buildings also evoke. However, unlike Cadet Chapel or Eero Saarinen’s Law School on 60th Street, the buildings’ lines do not go in one direction but fluctuate and vary. Compare Gang’s flattened, uneven, or rounded edges to Netsch and Saarinen’s sharp angles. Both succeed in creating beautiful shadows.

Of course, this fluid sort of assymetry is classic Jeanne Gang. At its best (“Aqua”) this approach makes for dynamic facades that surprise the viewer with unexpected waves and naturalistic texture. However, by exchanging order for chaos Gang struggles to make a single point with her architecture. And by now, the approach no longer seems radical. All this is not to say that I don’t like it. I really do. It’s just not a masterpiece. (I want to challenge the University to look for an architect who will make a name for himself/herself with an instantly legendary building–along the lines of the Sydney Opera House or something.)

Gang had lots to say in the unveiling presentation about the inside of the building, which is what really counts. She said that the building was designed from the inside out; the “geometry of what’s inside” “informed” the whole physical structure. I very much agree with SGA’s prioritization of student needs in the design process. For all the external ugliness of Max, and the blandness of South, both buildings are extremely popular with students because they function so well as dormitories. They also, arguably, have strengthened UChicago’s wonderful “House System.” Will this one? I believe so, but it all depends on how well the “House hub” system that Gang has devised plays out, especially since the rooms appear to be on the small side. 3-story “hubs” centralize a House’s common rooms and other common space. My guess is that these hubs will be embraced by the students instantly. It helps that they will be incredibly beautiful multistory spaces.

Gang promises that the House hubs and other shared spaces like a top-floor reading room with gorgeous views and a “community commons” will encourage the University’s academic mission by providing “collaboration zones.” Gang and the other panelists–Dean Boyer, Karen Warren Coleman, and Steve Wiesenthal–also touched about how vital the residential system is for friend making, and that these friendships will prove crucial to any student’s career. (I’m so glad the University of Chicago has stopped pretending that embracing “the life of the mind” will get you a job.) The House hubs will hopefully enhance this effort; the retention of the House table tradition in the new dining hall is crucial. Gang said that she “learned from” Harry Weese, the late architect of Pierce. His “high quality common spaces…inspired” the hubs, she said. He also created ways for students to “people watch,” which apparently will happen in the new dorm’s “cascading” lounges, too.

From what I can tell, the student body is already impressed with the “futuristic” design of the new residence hall, the house hubs, and fifteenth floor reading room. It is true, the students who will get to live in this new facility are very lucky! And I really think that this facility will transform undergraduate housing: with South, Max, and “North,” UChicago will be practically unrivaled among its peers in offering its students modern and conveniently located housing options. Recent grads must be quite envious!

It will also be interesting to see if the less tangible promises come true, for instance what Gang called “a more direct connection between student life and city life.” I hope so. Gang’s striking, energetic design is a wonderful hybrid of campus and urban architecture. It will improve student and campus life, and perhaps even do some good for Hyde Park.

Links:

Video from the UChicago unveiling presentation. University feature article.  Piece in The Tribune. Sun-Times. SGA’s web page. Fast Company Design article. UChicago’s videos on it: click here, here, and here. DNA Info article. Chicago Mag article. Arch Daily article. Dexigner article. Chicago Business Journal article. Dean Boyer’s book on housing.