Logan Center: The Design
Architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien Unveil Designs for the Logan Center
The architects presented their Center designs Tues, Nov 10, 2009 to a standing-room only campus audience of students, faculty, alumni, staff, and friends.
Video: Design Unveiling Highlights
Video produced by the Chicago Media Initiatives Group
Reva and David Logan Center for Creative and Performing Arts
The Reva and David Logan Center for Creative and Performing Arts uses innovative design to foster artistic experimentation and multidisciplinary inquiry. A cornerstone of the South Campus located along the Midway Plaisance, the visually stunning, glass-and-stone building, designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, will seamlessly bridge the space between art and architecture. (download PDF)
Northeast View
The 11-story, 168-foot tower is designed around the tradition of integrated practice and criticism—one of the defining elements of UChicago arts. A café at the base links collaborative spaces including classrooms, galleries, media labs, studios performance spaces, and set building shops. The tower features a seminar room with expansive open windows that penetrate the corner of the eighth floor, a rooftop deck, and a double-height performance penthouse. To the west, a sawtooth roof allows natural light from the north to permeate the visual arts studios and shops. (download PDF)
Southwest View
The evening view of the southern entrance of the Logan Arts Center (viewed looking northeast). The Adele and Willard Gidwitz Lobby is framed by a light-filled cantilever lounge space and a box office that will provide information on arts activities throughout the University of Chicago and city. A turnaround will allow visitors to be dropped off at the entrance. (download PDF)
North Lobby and Gallery Entrance
The north lobby off the Midway Plaisance will welcome guests to experience the gallery and video projection space for work by faculty, students, and visiting visual artists. It also will provide a dramatic entrance to the café, the tower film screening room, and the lower-level digital media center. Artwork shown in the Gallery created by Laura Letinsky and Jason Salavan, Faculty in the Department of Visual Arts. (download PDF)
The Adele and Willard Gidwitz Lobby
Located off the southern entrance, the Adele and Willard Gidwitz Lobby welcomes audience members to three state-of-the-art performance spaces (450-seat performance hall, black box theater, and proscenium theater), and provides a daytime gathering space with access to the second floor rooftop deck and courtyard. (download PDF)
Central Courtyard
Light reflects off the glass-flanked open air courtyard (looking west from Midway Studios) and creates an inviting gathering space. The streamlined, linear design is highlighted by a bridge along the podium roof connecting the film screening room and second floor rooftop deck. The Gidwitz Lobby, north lobby, café and shops are also visible and physically accessible. The courtyard is also designed to feature an outdoor performance venue for both spontaneous and formal artistic presentation. (download PDF)
Theater / Visual Arts Shops
At the central core of the building, the shared Theater / Visual Arts Shops are lofted to the second story and flooded with natural light via the sawtooth skylights. The shared workspaces are designed to encourage student collaboration in construction and painting of sets, sculptures, and props. (download PDF)
Performance Hall Arranged for Music
The 450-seat Performance Hall will provide another home for the vibrant campus music scene, which includes dozens of student ensembles, strong academic programming, and acclaimed professional artists. The dynamically acoustic, state-of-the-art venue is designed with flexibility to provide optimal settings for a range of performances including piano, chamber orchestra, jazz ensembles, a cappella groups, Middle Eastern music, and more. The Performance Hall will be a wonderful complement to the many practice rooms, rehearsal spaces, and classrooms located in the Logan Arts Center. (download PDF)
Performance Hall Arranged for Film Screening and Lectures
With flexible acoustical banners, the 450-seat Performance Hall can be arranged as a venue for film screenings in a wide variety of formats as well as a space for silent film with musical accompaniment. The state-of-the-art screening space will also support the groundbreaking scholarship of faculty and students interested in cinema and media, and provide opportunities for lectures, public events programming, screenings of student-produced and archival films, conferences and symposia, workshops, and programs with visiting artists and scholars. (download PDF)
Performance Hall Arranged for Dance and Theater
With the addition of curtains, the Performance Hall transforms into a 450-seat theater and dance venue, creating new opportunities and enhanced collaborative space for the more than 50 student and curricular organizations. The Performance Hall will complement the 100-seat Proscenium Theater and 150-seat Black Box Theater, design and production shops, and multiple rehearsal spaces throughout the new complex. (download PDF)
Performance Penthouse
Topping off the tower, the Performance Penthouse will provide dramatic views of the city as a backdrop for music classes, lectures and colloquia, ensemble rehearsals and weekend performances, including poetry readings, jazz concerts, and student improvisational cabarets. (download PDF)
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“ Through the collaborative work of our faculty, students, and professional arts organizations, we are now forging an integrative model that is unique among our peer institutions. Scholars, practicing artists, and students are crafting new curricular, co-curricular, and public programs that productively combine research, teaching, and creative expression. The David and Reva Logan Center for the Arts will add luster to the university’s already rich history of groundbreaking artistic exploration and accomplishment, and become a model of its kind on the national stage.
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—Larry Norman, Deputy Provost for the Arts
Integrating Art and Architecture
Soaring skyward from a luminous, light-filled core, the new Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts will be a catalyst for creativity at the University of Chicago. A cornerstone of south campus, the visually stunning glass and stone building design by award-winning architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, seamlessly bridges the space between art and architecture.
Minimalism
The elegant modernist design (a hallmark of the couple) features a striking eleven-story, 170-foot tower, punctuated with light, open air terraces, and roof top decks. The vertical tower, rising from the urban landscape like a silo, will offer unparalleled views of the Chicago skyline, as well as provide multi-levels for interdisciplinary experimentation: teaching and presentation spaces for cinema and media studies, music, theater and performance, dance, and visual arts are intentionally interwoven throughout. A café anchors the building, connecting to the “podium,” which houses visual arts studios and shops and is topped with a sawtooth roof angled for northern exposure.
New Resources for the Arts
The center will add significant space and resources to Chicago’s visual arts, theater and performance, music, and cinema and media studies programs—and inspire everything in between. The architects conceive the building as a “mixing bowl,” fusing spaces, weaving individual rehearsal rooms with artist studios, critical theory classrooms with shops, and media editing labs with a video production studio. Public spaces include ensemble rehearsal rooms, black-box and proscenium theaters, a performance auditorium with exceptional acoustics, a gallery, a state-of-the-art film screening venue, a café, and dynamic outdoor spaces.
