On Saturday, Sept. 17, the University of Chicago will open its three-building, 394,000-sf Campus North Residential Commons that the college and its AEC partners are hoping can serve as a “front door” to the college.
The $150 million Commons, designed by Studio Gang Architects and built by Mortenson Construction, is situated on 195,480 sf at the north edge of campus. Its towers range from five to 15 stories tall, peaking at 164 feet. The towers have a total of 800 student beds within 252 single rooms and 193 double rooms that are organized into eight three-level “houses,” named after prominent members of the university’s community, including Dean John W. Boyer, who has led the college for the past 24 years.
“We designed an architecture that really feels like home for the students, but that simultaneously opens to and engages with the community,” Jeanne Gang, founding principal of Studio Gang Architects, told UChicagoNews.
The towers are connected by a second-floor common space. There are five music practices rooms and eight pianos; and two classrooms for campus-wide use. There is 23,603 sf of resident-only landscaped courtyards located above ground level. And a 48,791-sf green roof is set up to retain rainwater on site (the building is shooting for LEED Gold certification).
The top floor includes a multipurpose room, 14 group study spaces, and a 24-hour reading room. The first-floor area offers 12,000 sf of retail space for vendors Heritage Bicycles, Insomnia Cookies, TimBuk2 (which sells backpacks and messenger bags), and Dollop Coffee Co., whose shop is at the center of the building.
Other amenities include 118,150 sf of landscaped quadrangle, streetscape, and plaza. The university worked with the city to turn one street, Greenwood Avenue, into a pedestrian landscape connection linking the street on which the Commons sits with several athletic and arts centers on campus.
The 450-seat Frank and Laura Baker Dining Commons within the residential hall is organized so that students sit at tables whose names correspond to their residence “houses.” Image: Steve Hall ©Hedrick Blessing.
Within the Commons is the 28,000-sf Frank and Laura Baker Dining Commons, named after an alumnus, Frank Baker, who last year made a $7 million gift to the university to endow undergraduate scholarships and internships for lower-income students of outstanding promise. The dining room’s 450 seats are along tables designated for each of the Commons’ houses.
The building’s design lets in maximum natural light and fresh air into interior spaces. Each student’s residence comes equipped with automated controls to account for variable sun exposure as part of maintaining comfort.
The building’s external envelope consists of 1,034 white precast concrete panels (made from 110 different molds) hung on an aluminum curtain wall. And this building includes the first major application of a two-way radiant slab heating and cooling system in the Chicago region.
The other Building Team members on this design-build project were Magnussen Klemencic Associates (SE), dbHMS (MEP/fire protection engineer), David Mason & Associates (CE), Hanbury (associate architect), Hood Design Studio (landscape concept designer), Terry Guen Landscape Architects (landscape architect), Threshold Acoustics (acoustical designer), Lightswitch Architectural (lighting designer), Jensen Hughes (code consultant), Jenkins & Huntington (elevator consultant), and Transsolar (sustainability consultant).
Related Stories
| Oct 13, 2010
New health center to focus on education and awareness
Construction is getting pumped up at the new Anschutz Health and Wellness Center at the University of Colorado, Denver. The four-story, 94,000-sf building will focus on healthy lifestyles and disease prevention.
| Oct 13, 2010
Community college plans new campus building
Construction is moving along on Hudson County Community College’s North Hudson Campus Center in Union City, N.J. The seven-story, 92,000-sf building will be the first higher education facility in the city.
| Oct 12, 2010
University of Toledo, Memorial Field House
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Memorial Field House, once the lovely Collegiate Gothic (ca. 1933) centerpiece (along with neighboring University Hall) of the University of Toledo campus, took its share of abuse after a new athletic arena made it redundant, in 1976. The ultimate insult occurred when the ROTC used it as a paintball venue.
| Oct 12, 2010
Owen Hall, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Mich.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Officials at Michigan State University’s East Lansing Campus were concerned that Owen Hall, a mid-20th-century residence facility, was no longer attracting much interest from its target audience, graduate and international students.
| Oct 12, 2010
Cell and Genome Sciences Building, Farmington, Conn.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Administrators at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington didn’t think much of the 1970s building they planned to turn into the school’s Cell and Genome Sciences Building. It’s not that the former toxicology research facility was in such terrible shape, but the 117,800-sf structure had almost no windows and its interior was dark and chopped up.
| Oct 12, 2010
Full Steam Ahead for Sustainable Power Plant
An innovative restoration turns a historic but inoperable coal-burning steam plant into a modern, energy-efficient marvel at Duke University.
| Sep 16, 2010
Green recreation/wellness center targets physical, environmental health
The 151,000-sf recreation and wellness center at California State University’s Sacramento campus, called the WELL (for “wellness, education, leisure, lifestyle”), has a fitness center, café, indoor track, gymnasium, racquetball courts, educational and counseling space, the largest rock climbing wall in the CSU system.
| Sep 13, 2010
Community college police, parking structure targets LEED Platinum
The San Diego Community College District's $1.555 billion construction program continues with groundbreaking for a 6,000-sf police substation and an 828-space, four-story parking structure at San Diego Miramar College.
| Sep 13, 2010
Campus housing fosters community connection
A 600,000-sf complex on the University of Washington's Seattle campus will include four residence halls for 1,650 students and a 100-seat cafe, 8,000-sf grocery store, and conference center with 200-seat auditorium for both student and community use.
| Sep 13, 2010
Richmond living/learning complex targets LEED Silver
The 162,000-sf living/learning complex includes a residence hall with 122 units for 459 students with a study center on the ground level and communal and study spaces on each of the residential levels. The project is targeting LEED Silver.
