Chicago Cultural Development News

[spyguy]

http://news.uchicago.edu/news.php?asset_id=2202

Laboratory Schools early childhood facility named for alumnus Earl Shapiro
January 4, 2011

...Earl Shapiro Hall will be located in the 5800 block of South Stony Island Avenue. The City Council approved the plans for the early childhood campus in November. Construction on the new building is scheduled to begin next fall, with completion projected for summer 2013.

[spyguy]

[spyguy]

Logan Arts Center update

Web Services - IT Services/ flickr

Web Services - IT Services/ flickr

Web Services - IT Services/ flickr

[Urbanight]

^

How come IIT haven't built crap in years? Its seems like the only college in this city that is not expanding.

[untitledreality]

Originally Posted by Urbanight

How come IIT haven't built crap in years? Its seems like the only college in this city that is not expanding.

With a diminishing student population there really isn't a need for lots of new construction. On top of that, a good portion of the main campus is landmark protested, so it makes more sense to invest in the existing structures since you have to keep them anyways. It is a huge campus for roughly 7,000 total students, many of which commute to the area... if enrollment starts to blossom once again you will see more expansion.

ps... are the 2003 works of Rem Koolhaas and Helmut Jahn not recent enough for you?

[spyguy]

Poetry Foundation

[spyguy]

Northwestern's new Bienen School of Music should start construction this spring

[aic4ever]

Originally Posted by Urbanight

^

How come IIT haven't built crap in years? Its seems like the only college in this city that is not expanding.

They have been redeveloping existing buildings significantly of late. They most recently completed the Technology Park, just to the west of IIT Tower, in what was before that a nearly entirely unused building. Before that, they did renovations of two of their lecture halls on 33rd Street, upgrading the mechanical systems and replacing the windows. Before that was the Helmut Jahn dorms which were preceded by the Campus Center. Main Building also got an ADA upgrade that included a new elevator and reworked bathrooms, along with some other interior remodeling.

I am not aware as to whether they carried them out yet, but there were also plans in the works to do gut/rehabs on what are commonly referred to as the "married dorms" on the north end of campus, just south of the baseball field.

The school has been building new or renovating for about a decade now and isn't planning to stop.

The master plan for the campus involves reworking the entire "quad" area where the fraternities and sororities currently reside, though this is currently, and will remain, a highly politicized task, as the school is very passively aggressively attempting to force the entire greek community off campus. This will prove difficult as most of the fraternities have very strong contracts in place to remain where they are and don't plan on going anywhere if they're not getting brand new houses out of the school accompanied by guarantees that they can remain on campus.

[spyguy]

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/4...an-avenue.html

New Pritzker Military Library opens on South Michigan Avenue
BY KARA SPAK

U.S. military forces have advanced onto Michigan Avenue.

The uniforms, medals, flags and thousands of military-related books in the Pritzker Military Library were recently transferred to spacious new digs at 104 S. Michigan Ave., across the street from the Art Institute of Chicago.

In 40,000 square feet, the private nonprofit foundation aims to tell in a nonpartisan way the story of the military through the lives of the men and women who have served in uniform.

[NittanyBLUE2002]

Would be willing to bet that the architect of NU's school of music is the same as Penn State's graduate school of law.

[NittanyBLUE2002]

Good thing nobody took me up on the bet!

Penn State's Dickinson School of Law was designed by New York City's Ennead Architects while Northwestern's Bienen School of Music was designed by Chicago's very own Goettsch Partners.

[Ordoseclorum]

Originally Posted by NittanyBLUE2002

Good thing nobody took me up on the bet!

Penn State's Dickinson School of Law was designed by New York City's Ennead Architects while Northwestern's Bienen School of Music was designed by Chicago's very own Goettsch Partners.

I guess it's off topic, but that Penn State law building infuriates me. It looks nice, but you can't touch it. It's set off in the center of a field for no apparent reason, way off on the edge of campus. It's beautiful, but they might as well have put it in the center of a big, deadening Soviet plaza.

[petey2428]

Originally Posted by NittanyBLUE2002

Would be willing to bet that the architect of NU's school of music is the same as Penn State's graduate school of law.

reminds me of University of Illinois's Temple Hoyne Buell Hall which is also set off in a hidden corner of the South Quad.

[i_am_hydrogen]

Beneath this bubble, a book-storing marvel; Jahn's ambitious design for new Mansueto Library will prove good for students as well as their research material

Cityscapes by Blair Kamin
May 18, 2011

Call it the Book Bubble. The Dome for Tomes. Or the Spaceship That Made Reading Oh-So-Cool.

However you describe it, Chicago architect Helmut Jahn’s audacious new Joe and Rika Mansueto Library at the University of Chicago is a convention-busting marvel, pairing a soaring elliptical dome that shelters a grand reading room with a dramatic underground storage space in which giant robotic cranes retrieve books stacked in mausoleum-like bins of stainless steel.

Mark my word: a sci-fi thriller or a movie like “The Social Network” will be shot in this library someday. It is an ingeniously conceived and largely well-executed design, one that students seem to love because it lets natural light pour inside, liberating them from the university’s dimly-lit reading rooms.

http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune....ill-prove.html

All images are from: http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/theskyline/






Robotic book retrieval system

[spyguy]

Milton Friedman Institute (University of Chicago)