Logan Arts Center - Tod William Billie Tsien

I thought it was necessary to post the most current work of Tod Williams and Billie Tsien as their work always represents extreme craft and detail. But I was equally impressed by their most recent representations of the project.

Integrating Art and Architecture

Soaring skyward from a luminous, light-filled core, the new Reva and David Logan Center for Creative and Performing 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, 155-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.

text courtesy of UChicago Arts