ACSA Creative Achievement Award Submission: The Future of the Netsch Campus p1 of 20 The Future of the Netsch Campus Fall 2015 – Spring 2019 When it opened in January 1965, the Netsch Campus at then-University of Illinois Chicago Circle was a new model of public urban education. In pointed contradistinction to the pastoral forms of the traditionally rural public university, exemplified by Jefferson’s University of Virginia, Walter Netsch and his team from Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) sought to materialize this new model through alternative forms of urban and architectural design. Conceptualized as a pebble dropped in a pond–aka “the drop of water scheme”–representing “knowledge spreading out,” the dense inner rings of campus contained the shared lecture halls and classroom buildings, flanked by the library and the student union, while outer rings contained discipline-specific buildings. The campus was connected throughout by raised walkways–human highways designed for a projected enrollment of 32,000 students within five years–that came together in a great public amphitheater called the Circle Forum at the literal and conceptual center. Hailed by the architectural press as a spectacular example of Brutalism, its reception on campus was decidedly more ambivalent. Diagrammatic Campus Plan, c1961 View of the Center of Campus, c1964 000-20-01.001, Photograph Subject File 086.Cabanban-20227.26, Photograph Subject File Both courtesy of the University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago Library In the 1990s, the campus was irrevocably transformed by the addition of dormitories at the northeast corner and by the removal of the walkways and central amphitheater; reasons for the demolition included a lack of maintenance, a lack of accessibility, a perception of danger, and a lack of “green.” All of these issues were solvable, but the University chose not to do so. In 2015, upon the arrival of a new Chancellor with an ambitious agenda that included new buildings, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) began to plan new additions and renovations to the campus. While some of these are excellent, such as the transformation of an abandoned Com Ed substation site into a new collective lawn and the restoration of University Hall, not all are appropriately cognizant of its important history. My involvement in the future of the Netsch Campus emerged from my research and teaching expertise focused on the relationship between architecture and urban design, here understood as architecture/campus/city. Combining that expertise with my role as Associate Dean in the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts (CADA), I leveraged a potential new arts building for the College to advance discussion about the future of architecture and urban design at UIC, particularly within the context of the core design principles of the original Netsch Campus. My initiative had two fundamentally interconnected parts. The first was a pair of design competitions that I proposed and developed–one internal, the other international–which culminated in May 2019 with the selection of OMA/KOO as the winning team in ACSA Creative Achievement Award Submission: The Future of the Netsch Campus p2 of 20 the international design competition for a new Center for the Arts for the University. The second was a series of tandem educational opportunities that I either developed or enabled for architecture students and faculty; for the wider campus public, including the University’s executive administrators; and for the city at large. Collectively, these initiatives provoked a city-wide conversation about the future of the architecture and urban design of UIC for the first time in decades. Project Contents and Audiences 1. Internal Design Competition for Visual and Performing Arts Center College and University p3 Gallery 400 Exhibitions University and public p5 MAS Context Presentation University and public p9 2. Design Studios for Residence Halls School of Architecture p10 3. International Design Competition for Center for the Arts University and public p12 Presentations by finalist firms University and public p13 “Public Performances” Symposium University and public p19 Harrison Field, project site for International Design Competition. Photograph by Judith De Jong. ACSA Creative Achievement Award Submission: The Future of the Netsch Campus p3 of 20 Internal Design Competition for Visual and Performing Arts Center August 18, 2015 – November 16, 2015 CADA Kick-Off: Tuesday September 22, 2015 Presentation to Chancellor and Cabinet, Dean, Directors, and Campus Architect: Monday December 7, 2015, 8:30am Presentation to VPAC Working Group: Monday December 7, 2015, 10:30am In Spring 2015, at the behest of then College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts (CADA) Dean Steve Everett, Theatre Projects Consultants (TPC) led a pre-design and programming phase with a working group of representative faculty and staff to determine an overall scope and program for a Visual and Performing Arts Center (VPAC) that would house both the School of Theatre and Music and the School of Art and Art History. The results of the work included overall space lists, adjacency diagrams, and a workbook of precedent performance spaces for a 326,500 square foot building that would include a 700 seat concert hall, a 150 seat recital hall, a 300 seat flexible main stage theatre, and a 100 seat black box theatre. The University’s Office of Capital Planning and Management assigned a pre-approved retainer architect to produce a basic concept design based on the TPC study, from which a concept design price could be estimated, and from which images could be developed for fundraising for the project. My involvement was peripheral until I was invited to attend a late-in-the-process working session with TPC and the retainer architect, at the end of which I made two recommendations to the Dean. In the short term, I recommended we stage an internal design competition for the concept design with teams of architecture and design faculty. As state employees, they were likely ineligible for the actual project with the University. However, we could engage their substantial expertise to develop concept design proposals that would communicate the conceptual ambitions of the project–which to date had been largely ignored; shape discourse about the project; and produce compelling imagery for fundraising. In the long term, I recommended we use what we learned through the internal design competition to launch an international design competition, should we be allowed to do so under the University’s procurement rules–a big if. Soon thereafter, the Dean released me to prepare the internal Request for Qualifications. I wrote a brief to accompany the TPC material; issued the RFQ to the faculty; organized a selection committee comprised of Dean Steve Everett, SoA Director Robert Somol, SoA Acting Director Paul Preissner, SoA Associate Director David Brown, and me; and coordinated the overall initiative. Three teams were chosen from eight faculty applications, and a kick-off discussion between those teams and Theatre Projects, open to everyone in the College, was held on Tuesday September 22nd at the Innovation Center. The brief was an opportunity to establish the larger conceptual goals of the project and to situate the TPC program document within that framework. Using the School Directors’ vision statement as a point of departure, the brief asked the teams to conceptualize an architecturally significant visual and performing arts center that would broadcast the ambitions of the College as a whole; to engage new and existing audiences; to organize a new arts campus by designing relationships to existing CADA spaces in seven buildings near-by; to test the program document in relation to the conceptual goals; and to test phasing strategies, as it seemed highly likely the project would not be realized all at once. The complex urban site–at the time a parking lot–was another key challenge; a full city block, with a northern edge defined by a major highway/El line and the rapidly-developing West Loop and a southern edge adjacent to the historic Netsch Campus, it is a critical bridge between campus and city. Moreover, the highly visible site had five sides. The faculty did not disappoint. On December 7th, the teams presented to the new Chancellor and his Executive Cabinet, the Dean, School Directors, the Campus Architect, and key members of the Office of Capital Programs and Project Management, followed by a presentation to/discussion with the VPAC Working Group. For the first time, the full opportunity and vision that architecture could imagine for this project and its relationship to both campus and city became vivid. ACSA Creative Achievement Award Submission: The Future of the Netsch Campus p4 of 20 The Center: Gateway, Hub, Incubator Sarah Dunn | Associate Professor, UIC School of Architecture; Principal, UrbanLab Kelly Bair | Assistant Professor, UIC School of Architecture; Principal, Central Standard Office of Design Maya Nash | Adjunct Assistant Professor, UIC School of Architecture (MArch ’11, BS in Mathematics ’03, UIC) Cheryl Towler Weese | Associate Professor, UIC School of Design; Principal, Studio Blue With UrbanLab: Martin Felsen, Jeff Macias, Matt Busscher (MArch ’15, UIC), Aishwarya Keshav, Yue Li, and Joe Perry (MArch ’19, UIC) UIC School of Architecture: Caylen Doyle (BSArch ’17), Alejandra Edery-Ferre (BSArch ’17), Ruta Misiunas (BSArch ’17), and Tom Pytel (BSArch ’16) Studio Blue: J. Brad Sturm and Silja Hillmann Arts Performance Center Sam Jacob | Clinical Professor, UIC School of Architecture; Principal, Sam Jacob Studio Alexander Eisenschmidt | Assistant Professor, UIC School of Architecture; Partner, Offshore Mischa Leiner | MDes Faculty, UIC School of Design and HGK Basel; Principal, CoDe With Webb Yates Engineers Play Andrew Zago | Clinical Professor, UIC School of Architecture; Principal, Zago Architecture Sarah Blankenbaker | Clinical Assistant Professor, UIC School of Architecture Sharon Oiga | Associate Professor, UIC School of Design; Principal, Sharon Oiga Design With Zago Architecture: Laura Bouwman, Andrew Adzemovic, Nan Yen Chen Begum Baysun, Kazuhiro Okamoto, Shao Wen Tou, and Linbo Xie.