Architecture MN magazine

THE WINNERS

High design for learning and creative interaction

FULL DISPLAY

The Chicago Architecture Center opens to acclaim

MAR|APR 19 $3.95 architecturemn.com

A modern addition for Temple Israel DIRECTORY OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS

PAVIELLE AT THE ORDWAY A VISIT TO NEWSTUDIO ARCHITECTURE

HONOR AWARDS

Architecture MN is a publication of The American Institute of Architects Minnesota architecturemn.com

Architecture MN, the primary public outreach tool of the American Institute of Architects Minnesota, is published to inform the public about architecture designed by AIA Minnesota members and to communicate the spirit and value of quality architecture to both the public and the membership.

2018 HONOR AWARDS

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Features 26 2018 AIA Minnesota

Honor Awards

ON THE COVER Temple Israel Minneapolis, Minnesota “Photographing architecture requires a good measure of contemplation on camera positions and light conditions that best convey the intentions of the design,” says photographer Paul Crosby. “The serenity of the garden courtyard, with its simple, elegant forms, turned out to be an excellent place to start.”

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Four education projects score high marks in the Upper Midwest’s most prestigious architecture awards program.

Brookview Elementary School page 28

By Amy Goetzman Temple Israel page 32

By Linda Mack

Haverford College Visual Culture, Arts and Media Building page 34

By Joel Hoekstra Carleton College Music and Performance Commons page 36

By Joel Hoekstra

38 Full Display

By Joel Hoekstra Photography by Pete Sieger and Peter VonDeLinde

“During the day, the Chicago Architecture Center’s glass exterior reflects the profiles of several iconic Chicago buildings, including the Tribune Tower and the Wrigley Building,” writes Joel Hoekstra.

“At night, passersby on both sides of the Chicago river can see into the illuminated skyscraper gallery on the upper level.”

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EDITOR’S NOTE CULTURE CRAWL

BY AMY GOETZMAN The past few years have seen Duluth’s historic NorShor Theatre go from pigeon infestation to packed houses.

TOWN TALK INTERVIEW BY SHERI HANSEN Interdisciplinary artist PaviElle on composing and performing A Requiem for Zula for the SPCO’s Tapestry19 festival at the Ordway Center.

SPEED READING

BY FRANK EDGERTON MARTIN A new book by Larry Millett charts the scandalous history of Minneapolis’ ill-fated Metropolitan Building (1890–1961).

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STUDIO NewStudio Architecture settles into a new space in an old factory building in St. Paul’s Creative Enterprise Zone.

PERSPECTIVE

BY THOMAS FISHER, ASSOC. AIA Could a change from traditional to performance-based zoning aid Minneapolis in its plans to create a more equitable city?

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BY CHRISTOPHER HUDSON Studio BV’s big idea for Field Nation’s new headquarters takes clean lines to a whole new level.

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FAST FORWARD Water Works park will bring green space, plaza seating, and a restaurant pavilion to Minneapolis’ central riverfront.

WAYFARER

BY ERIC MUELLER A Minneapolis photographer frames the jaw-dropping gardens of a 17th-century chateau in south-central France.

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BY MORGAN SHEFF “Stepping inside Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Farnsworth House gave me goosebumps,” says a visiting St. Paul photographer.

DIRECTORY OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE FIRMS

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CREDITS

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EDITOR’S NOTE

ERIC MUELLER

Center Stage This past October, I spent parts of two days at the Chicago Architecture Center (page 38) with photographers Pete Sieger, Peter VonDeLinde, and J.C. Buck. The freshly minted venue—a two-level, attraction-packed jewel box at the base of a Mies van der Rohe–designed office tower on the Chicago River—made quite an impression.

Architecture MN has been keen to do a feature article on the CAC ever since, and not just because it’s a worthwhile travel destination. AIA Minnesota—our publisher—is working with the Minnesota Historical Society to explore possibilities for creating a Minnesota architecture center (43) in the historical society’s Mill City Museum complex in Minneapolis. Our CAC visit stirred our imagination for what a Minnesota center could be.

The Chicago Architecture Center serves a metro-area population much larger than the Twin Cities metro, so its size—20,000 square feet—won’t be matched in Minnesota. But early ideas for a Minnesota venue do mirror the CAC in a few interesting ways: AIA Minnesota is focused on a high-profile riverfront location that resonates with the architectural story of its city; and the organization envisions the center as a place where visitors can learn about and engage with the past, present, and future of the built environment. One important difference is that a Minnesota center would aim to be statewide in nature, with pop-up exhibits, events, and interpretive elements at locations around the state, including other MNHS sites.

INTERACT & CONNECT

Chicago design travel on Instagram #archmnmagchicago2018

Residential design panel at Room & Board architecturemn.com/events

Affordable Housing Design Award video architecturemn.com/videos

Fittingly, this issue is itself a bit of an architecture center: It’s got a showcase of notable new work by local architects (20, 26); the stories of extraordinary buildings that have been saved (11) and lost (15); a conversation with a local artist on the spirit of a storied neighborhood (12); and a thought-provoking presentation on how zoning regulations could be adapted to yield more affordable and equitable communities (19). We also preview a new park (23) that would surely synergize with an architecture center on the Minneapolis riverfront.

The CAC’s eye-popping skyscraper gallery and interactive city model are world-class exhibits, but what I remember most about that October weekend is the wide-eyed visitors of all ages streaming through the galleries. As much as we at Architecture MN believe that a magazine can bring the many aspects of architecture to life, we relish the idea of a physical place devoted to this endeavor.

Christopher Hudson, Hon. AIAMN hudson@aia-mn.org

@archmnmag

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Community Voice INTERVIEW BY SHERI HANSEN

PaviElle French first appeared in the Twin Cities music scene at age five.

Nearly 30 years later, she’s set to debut A Requiem for Zula with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, a piece for which she received the American Composers Forum grant from the Jerome Fund for New Music. The piece is a love story and elegy for her mother, and it weaves a musical tapestry that brings St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood to life.

Your piece is grounded in the Rondo community.

How do you translate something like a place into a musical concept?

The whole piece is about St. Paul and Rondo.

I see Rondo growing and rebuilding now. The new Rondo Commemorative Plaza [November/ December 2018 issue] is at the end of the block we lived on. The VFW, which everybody called “the V,” used to anchor that corner of the block.

Brooks Funeral Home was one block down. We had party and life on one side, and death on the other. We had Maxfield Elementary behind us, and we lived right behind [longtime Minnesota

CHAD HOLDER

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TOWN TALK

MUSICAL ARTIST PAVIELLE FRENCH on her upcoming performances

with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra at the Ordway Center— and on setting St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood to music

PaviElle at the Ordway’s Concert Hall, where she’ll debut A Requiem for Zula with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.

The award-winning hall was designed by HGA Architects and Engineers.

State Fair police chief] Art Blakey, who was at the center of the community. I always felt I lived in the mecca, the heart of Rondo.

I always tell people I was raised in the last bit of the Rondo village; Rondo is home to me.

Home makes me feel degrees of warmth and nostalgia, which I captured in the comforting parts of the story of the song. Biking around the six-block radius within which I was allowed to bike, seeing my grandmother, seeing my friends’ grandmothers and parents. DoubleDutching down the block with my niece and my cousins. Going to Walker West Music Academy, going to the Penumbra Theatre, talking with the old heads. I turn them into sound colors, because it paints pictures.

As I wrote about those times, I constantly asked myself about the colors of the song, because that’s how I create place. People from Rondo will be in the audience, alongside people that are not from Rondo, and the color of the sound can help them all feel what it was like. I wanted to paint this story for everyone.

The piece goes from very warm and beautiful during the story of my mother’s life to very cold, and it captures all the things I felt processing my grief at her death. I was Dorothy from The Wizard

of Oz during that period. The turbulence of everything that happened during that time was the tornado, and I woke up when I moved to Hawaii. Hawaii was the technicolor Oz experience for me. The people that I met there showed me my courage, my brain, and my heart. Mom was Glinda the Good Witch. I could hear her telling me, “Click your heels.” So I came back to Minnesota, where my career really took off.

I always swore to myself I was going to be an alchemist with all this pain. A lot of this piece is about grief, and about living with the grief.

You still can grow lush life in rocky soil. Not everything’s going to grow there, but you can have a good life.

How did the history of Rondo shape your mother? And how did that shape you?

Mom was 11 or 12 when Interstate 94 was put through Rondo. She was there for the destruction of our community and for everything that happened afterward. She also experienced the aftereffects while living in Rondo in the 1970s. She saw how they rebuilt, and then the destruction that happened again in the crack era. In the early 1990s, my mom started working at Maxfield Elementary; then she got involved with the Inner City Youth League, where she was a counselor. Then Girl Scout Troop 6213,

and then Sage Community Gardens, where she taught people how to grow their own food.

My mom was also one of the first home buyers for Rondo Community Land Trust. They knocked on the door asking her to move her car at 3:00 in the morning so they could put a house [they were moving] in a lot across the street from us. She was so inspired; I could see the wheels turning in her head. She talked to the people that ran the trust, and a year and a half later, we bought the house at the end of the block.

Mom had incredible innate power. She could do whatever she wanted to do—no one could keep her from that. That’s astonishing to me as a black woman. I watched her leap over blocks and tall fences of institutionalized and structural racism.

Seeing that made me really confident; you can’t really tell me no. Which is how I ended up here, entering the classical field as a black woman.

I carry some of her magic, and I carry her.

Seeing the big Rondo sign from the freeway is so cool. We’re still here, and we’ll continue to grow and flourish. I think that this piece honors and stakes claim to both Rondo generally and my family’s role in it. And to get to perform it in St. Paul, for people that may not know about Rondo, is also amazing. >> continued on page 47

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“Landland, the artists featured in our first gallery show, loved our space so much that they decided to relocate from Chicago into a vacant space across the hall. We’re thrilled that our studio has inspired others to make the move over here.”

ALL PHOTOS BY PETER VONDELINDE

–SEAN WAGNER, AIA, NEWSTUDIO ARCHITECTURE

FAST FACTS FOUNDED: 2011 CITY AND NEIGHBORHOOD: St. Paul’s Creative Enterprise Zone creativeenterprisezone.org NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 19 AREAS OF SPECIALTY: Retail, residential, workplace, and adaptive reuse www.newstudioarchitecture.com ­16

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STUDIO

NEWSTUDIO ARCHITEC TURE A rising Minnesota architecture firm carves out a new home for itself in a former factory in St. Paul’s Creative Enterprise Zone

What makes NewStudio tick?

“People and ideas,” says Sean Wagner, AIA. “We’re big enough to have the capacity to do larger projects yet small enough to maintain a horizontal and open office culture.”

DID YOU BUILD OUT ANY OF THE NEW STUDIO YOURSELF? Yes. We were the general contractor for the project and did much of the work ourselves. BIGGEST SURPRISE DURING RENOVATION: We work with old buildings all the time, so we’ve come to expect imperfections, but the degree to which floors were out of level and columns were out of plumb was surprising even to us. We had to make some changes on the fly to adjust. THE BEST ENVIRONMENT FOR COLLABORATION: One that’s open, informal, and equitable. Having spaces that can get dirty, or that you can make noise and play in, is also beneficial. DO YOU HOST ANY EVENTS? Yes! Our lower level includes a large gallery for exhibitions and gatherings. FAVORITE THINGS YOU CAN WALK TO IN TWO MINUTES OR LESS: Urban Growler, Bang Brewing, and the Hampden Park Co-op. BEST-KEPT ARCHITECTURAL SECRET IN THE CREATIVE ENTERPRISE ZONE: The Minnesota Chemical Co. building, a complex of three turn-of-the-century brick-and-timber structures. We’re working with Exeter Group to bring this gem back to life, rebranded as the Mission Building. STAFF RECREATION: We recently had a blast throwing axes at FlannelJax’s.

SOMETHING IMPORTANT YOU LEARNED FROM A CLIENT: Humility. DESIGN HEROES: Alvar Aalto, Eduardo Souto de Moura, RCR Arquitectes, Norm Architects. FAVORITE MINNESOTA BUILDING NOT DESIGNED BY YOUR FIRM: Lakewood Garden Mausoleum—light, landscape, materials, and meaning all combine perfectly. DREAM PROJECT: A series of overlooks and pavilions along the North Shore and across the Iron Range in the spirit of the Norwegian National Tourist Routes.

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AIA M IN N ESOTA

HONOR THE FOUR 2018 WINNERS of Minnesota’s most prestigious architecture award ranged in project type from new construction to large addition to adaptive reuse of an historic building. But they share a common thread: All were designed to support learning and creative interaction.

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Seventy-nine projects were submitted for a 2018 AIA Minnesota Honor Award. Entries were evaluated for their degree of design invention, attention to detail, advancement of sustainable design, and other factors.

2018 winners: Brookview Elementary BWBR Page 28

Our annual Honor Awards showcase includes the stories behind these celebrated buildings and comments from the three nationally renowned architects who served on the awards jury.

Carleton College Music and Performance Commons HGA Architects and Engineers Page 36 Haverford College Visual Culture, Arts, and Media (VCAM) Building MSR Design Page 34 Temple Israel Expansion HGA Architects and Engineers Page 32

THE

JURORS

Kim Yao, AIA, is a principal of Architecture Research Office (ARO), a 33-person firm in New York City. She is an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and has also taught at the School of Constructed Environments at the New School’s Parsons School of Design and Barnard College. Kim is on the executive committee and board of both the Center for Architecture and AIA New York, as vice president of public outreach and 2019 president-elect.

Marlon Blackwell, FAIA, is the founder of Marlon Blackwell Architects in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Distinguished Professor and Chair in Architecture at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas. The work of his firm has received numerous awards, including the 2016 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture. Marlon was named a United States Artists Ford Fellow in 2014 and received the 2012 Architecture Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Allison Grace Williams, FAIA, has amassed an international portfolio of large-scale civic, cultural, and research facilities.

In her past roles at SOM, Perkins+Will, and AECOM, her interdisciplinary-design leadership generated awardwinning buildings that bridge culture, technology, and the environment and convey the values and traditions of their audience and place.

In 2017, Allison established her own firm, AGWms_studio.

She is also an adjunct lecturer at Stanford University and a frequent keynote speaker.

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BROOKVIEW ELEMENTARY BLENDS 2 1 S T- C E N T U R Y F L E X I B I L I T Y A N D D AY L I G H T I N G W I T H M I D C E N T U RY- M O D E R N R E F I N E M E N T

BY AMY GOETZMAN

Smart schools. 21st-century learning environments. Modern learning landscapes.

Futuristic terms like these can make it sound like educational practices in 2019 are all-new. What Stillwater Area Public Schools wanted for its new Brookview Elementary was a warm and welcoming school with the flexibility to support a range of teaching philosophies and styles, from the innovations of the recent past to those that are still emerging.

“The building draws upon the latest trends; it has flexibility, technology—all the things you might expect in a new school,” says

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BWBR architect Stephen Berg, AIA. “But the key goals were to build upon the true community feel that the district has cultivated in its other facilities, and to fit the building into the neighborhood. This school is meeting the needs of an area of Stillwater and Woodbury that has seen significant growth. The district needed to create a school that would be an excellent neighbor in terms of design and traffic.”

BWBR has a long-standing relationship with the district and a good understanding of its culture and needs. What’s more, several of the St. Paul firm’s employees

“Some may say this architecture is a little ordinary,” said juror Marlon Blackwell, FAIA. “I would say it’s extraordinary in its ordinariness. We need more refined buildings like this.”

send their children to Stillwater schools, including this new facility. The architects toured other buildings in the district, talked with teachers, and reached out to the community with a series of workshops at which they shared plans for the school and gained insight into neighborhood concerns. “The site was an elevated, open field, so the school was going to be a big

Above: The view from a light-filled corridor into one of the three color-coded learning communities. Below: The open entry to the learning resource center (library).

“Everything here is done with great skill and with a laudable resistance to overelaboration or exaggeration. The architects of this project said: ‘We can make a series of boxes, proportion and clad them well, and make great spaces inside them that people can move through and linger in, and that offer a great framework in which kids can learn.’ That’s quite powerful.”

—MARLON BLACKWELL, FAIA

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E L E M E N TA RY

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THE RECENT EXPANSION OF TEMPLE ISRAEL MELDS TIMELESS MODERN DESIGN AND A CLASSICAL REVIVAL LANDMARK

BY LINDA MACK

What we wrote in our May/June 2017 issue: The architectural transformation of Temple Israel, a leading Twin Cities Reform Jewish synagogue, began with a simple assignment: Fix the 1955 splitlevel education wing where preschoolers encountered numerous stairways. It ended with the opening of a 27,260-square-foot addition that propels the venerable institution into the 21st century.

Elevating the project to a higher level, HGA Architects and Engineers’

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Joan Soranno, FAIA, and John Cook, FAIA, designed a U-shaped building that houses the temple’s preschool and religiouseducation programs and adds compelling new indoor and outdoor spaces for the many religious and community events held at the synagogue. In addition to replacing the outdated education building, the expansion replaced the temple’s columned back entrance with a large lobby that funnels people to both the sanctuary and the new education wing.

Measuring 88 by 50 feet, the lobby is much more than an arrival space.

It’s where dinners and lunches are served after Friday and Saturday services.

It’s where SPCO and Minnesota Sinfonia concertgoers gather at intermission.

It’s where parents host bar and bat mitzvahs for their children. But it’s also a welcoming informal space where congregation members meet and parents dropping off preschoolers catch up over coffee—or simply hang out to work or read.

“The wood ceiling in the gathering space is something I’ve never seen done before. It turns wood into something so opulent. If you didn’t know better, you might think it was gold. The way it’s draped is just exquisite.”

—ALLISON GRACE WILLIAMS, FAIA

TE M P L E

I S RA EL

“The glass wall that the lobby shares with the courtyard is thin, and yet the fins register as thickness, as depth, and their shadows become part of the play of the geometry of the facade,” said juror Kim Yao, AIA.

TEMPLE ISRAEL EXPANSION

Before, people worshipped in the stunning 1928 sanctuary designed by Art Deco masters Liebenberg and Kaplan and then went to the basement. Now they stream in to the light-filled reception hall.

“We wanted to bring them into the light,” says Soranno. “It’s transformed the way they gather, celebrate, and mourn.”

The hall overlooks an outdoor courtyard created by the new addition. “You don’t do work with Joan and John without getting a garden,” says Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman. Soranno agrees: “A lot of our work is about light and landscape.

A garden wasn’t part of the original plan.

The ‘aha moment’ was deciding to orient everything around the garden.” AMN

Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota Client: Temple Israel Minneapolis Architect, interior ­ designer, and ­ landscape architect: HGA Architects and Engineers hga.com

Project team: Nancy Blankfard, AIA; Joan Soranno, FAIA; John Cook, FAIA; Robert Good, AIA General contractor: M.A. Mortenson Company Size: 27,260 square feet Cost: $21.1 million Completion: October 2016 Photographer: Paul Crosby

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VCAM

“The strength of this intervention is how it provides a whole new reading of the original building. The gymnasium has been transformed into something completely other, and yet its bones are still so legible.”

—MARLON BLACKWELL, FAIA

HAVERFORD COLLEGE VISUAL CULTURE, ARTS, AND MEDIA (VCAM) BUILDING Location: Haverford, Pennsylvania

Principal-in-charge: ­ Traci Lesneski, Assoc. AIA

Client: Haverford College

Project team: ­ Traci Lesneski, Assoc. AIA; Dagmara Larsen, Assoc.

AIA; Thomas Meyer, FAIA; Bob Ganser, AIA; Veronica McCracken

Architect: MSR Design msrdesign.com

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Energy modeling: ­ Bruce E. Brooks & Associates Landscape architect: ­ Haverford College Arboretum Construction manager: ­ Whiting-Turner

Size: 25,000 square feet Total project cost: $15.5 million Completion: ­ October 2017 Photographer: Lara Swimmer

“The interplay of new and old really speaks to what the college is trying to achieve in terms of being connected to its past but also forward-looking with this type of creative program,” said juror Kim Yao, AIA.

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HAVERFORD COLLEGE CONVERTS AN OLD GYMNASIUM INTO THE VISUAL CULTURE, ARTS, AND MEDIA BUILDING, A CAMPUS HUB

BY JOEL HOEKSTRA

What we wrote in our January/February 2019 issue: The Haverford campus is small, with just 1,300 students on 200 acres.

Space for new construction was limited, but school officials wondered if the proposed Visual Culture, Arts, and Media (VCAM) center might fit into the Old Gym, a solid stone structure erected on the college’s central green in 1900. The building hadn’t hosted a sporting event in a half century—in fact, it hadn’t been used at all for several decades. Over the years, Haverford had asked several architects to draw up schemes for the building’s reuse, but nothing ever came of the proposals. “It was a building that was much loved but underutilized,” says VCAM director Laura McGrane.

Known for its innovative approach to adaptive reuse, MSR Design saw the Old Gym as an opportunity to meld past, present, and future. The interior of the

three-story space was open, daylit by enormous arched windows. Thin, elegant trusses soared over the gym floor, while a suspended track ringed the perimeter.

MSR found ways to preserve the character-defining elements, inserting a box into the space that met programming requirements without the need for additions. “We were in continual communication to maintain a delicate balance between scope and available budget,” says MSR principal Traci Lesneski, Assoc. AIA. “We tried to emphasize that bigger wasn’t better— that quality and experience were key.”

chairs can gaze down at a performance in the lounge area. Sightlines even extend into the basement: A cutout in the original gym floor creates visual connections between the lowest level of the building and the highest. VCAM is also wired for the best-quality sound and video technology, yielding numerous opportunities for performances, art installations, expanded documentary, and experimental media work. AMN

The resulting 25,000-square-foot building mixes open and closed spaces. Students can watch a quiet film in the 65-seat screening room totally unaware of the laser cutters and 3D printers being operated a short distance away. From up on the track, students nestled into comfy

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“I love the contrast and the relationship between the monolithic, carved exterior and the thin, layered interior, and the way in which a visual language is beginning to emerge in the work,” said juror Marlon Blackwell, FAIA.

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CARLETON COLLEGE COMPLETES ITS WEITZ CENTER FOR CREATIVITY WITH THE VISUALLY DYNAMIC MUSIC AND PERFORMANCE COMMONS

BY JOEL HOEKSTRA

What we wrote in our January/February 2019 issue: In 2011, Carleton College opened the Weitz Center for Creativity in a former middle school surrounded by a church, a city park, and charming older homes. The award-winning adaptive reuse, plus the addition of a new wing, was heralded as a success by nearly everyone. Home to the college’s multidisciplinary arts departments, the Weitz Center ignited interest in dance, theater, and media and film studies.

The project fell short in only one respect: Despite considerable effort, the budget and programming ultimately did not allow for the inclusion of Carleton’s music department, which desperately needed a new home. Plans to unify the music department in one location were set aside.

But not for long. Six years later, Carleton opened the Weitz Center’s Music and Performance Commons, a 55,000-square-foot addition with

more than enough space to house music faculty, classrooms, practice rooms, and performance spaces. Designed

by HGA Architects and Engineers, the expansion integrates seamlessly with the rest of the building, fulfilling the college’s goal of cultivating collaborations among music students and faculty and their counterparts in other arts programs.

“The premise is that the arts are a powerful tool for fostering creative educational exploration,” says Steve Richardson, Carleton’s Puzak Family Director of the Arts. “The possibilities for developing new forms of art and pushing the bounds of art are unlimited in the expanded facility.”

The 400-seat Kracum Performance Hall, the centerpiece of the addition, was designed to accommodate a full range of events, from dance recitals to lectures, from drumming groups to chamber symphonies. Pivoting wood panels surround the stage, allowing users to change the look and feel of the hall and accommodate stage entrances for dance.

The back wall of the stage includes a section of integrated acoustic towers that can be rolled forward to create a smaller space for intimate performances.

Adjustable LED lighting can transform the space in seconds, from somber to celebratory, dark to brilliant. AMN

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MU S I C

CARLETON COLLEGE MUSIC AND PERFORMANCE COMMONS Location: Northfield, Minnesota

Principal-in-charge: Roxanne Nelson, AIA

Energy modeling: HGA; The Weidt Group

Completion: August 2017

Client: Carleton College

Design team: Tim Carl, FAIA; Andrew Weyenberg, AIA; Rebecca Celis, AIA; Rebecca Krull Kraling, AIA; Andrew Holmgren, AIA

General contractor: McGough Construction

Photographer: Albert Vecerka

Architect and ­ landscape architect: HGA Architects and Engineers hga.com

Size: 55,000 square feet Cost: $28 million

“The performance hall has these beautiful, perforated-wood acoustic screens with integrated lighting, all very tightly detailed. The screens create a texture and a depth of surface that relates to the carved window compositions on the brick exterior.

That resonance between the volume of the building and the inner lining of the auditorium is very powerful.”

—KIM YAO, AIA

CO M MO N S

Opposite top: The double-height rehearsal hall. Opposite bottom: The 400-seat performance hall.

Left: The architects enlivened the street-facing facade by faceting and texturing the brick.

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BY JOEL HOEKSTRA

FULL DISPLAY The new CHICAGO ARCHITECTURE CENTER stirs the public’s interest in architectural history and innovation with dynamic exhibits and programs for visitors of all ages.

It’s one of a handful of models that AIA Minnesota is paying close attention to as it envisions its own center.

PETER VONDELINDE

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PETE SIEGER

At the Chicago Architecture Center, even the scale models of skyscrapers soar high overhead. Towers represented include the Chrysler Building, Willis Tower, and the Petronas Towers.

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