University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, Chicago, Illinois
From Archiplanet
 | University of Chicago Graduate School of Business |
| Designer | Rafael Vinoly Architects PC, New York, New York, USA |
| Location | Chicago, Illinois, USA |
| Date | 2004 |
| Building Type | Academic |
| Street Address | 5807 S Woodlawn Ave, Chicago, Illinois, USA |
| Notes |
Contents |
[edit] Images
Copyright: Brad Feinknopf |
 Copyright: Brad Feinknopf |
[edit] Discussion
| Building Details | |
| Client | University of Chicago |
| Awards |
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Having been located in multiple buildings across campus, the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business held an international architectural competition for a new facility that would integrate the department. Rafael Viñoly Architects PC won the competition with a design that provided abundant communal and teaching spaces, while architecturally complementing two adjacent landmark buildings: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House, an exemplar of his Prairie Style, to the north, and the university’s Gothic-style Rockefeller Chapel to the west.
The Graduate School of Business is centered on the Winter Garden, a six-story glass atrium that floods the building with natural light, establishes a public gathering place, and organizes the building’s program elements. The Winter Garden’s roof is a four-pointed vault, built of tubular steel, with proportions that follow those of the Rockefeller Chapel’s lancet windows. The Winter Garden’s four main structural columns flare outward as they rise, resembling the branches of trees in a garden, while funneling rainwater on the exterior down through the center of the columns and into a reservoir.
The building perimeter is divided into two orders. A lower element, clad in horizontal panels of the same Indiana limestone that is widely used on other campus structures, establishes the scale of the base of the building and echoes the horizontal composition of Wright’s Robie House. Faculty offices above the base are set back to minimize the overall mass and are clad with a glazed curtain wall.
Classrooms and lecture halls are located below grade, though natural light from the Winter Garden enters this level through a ring of triple-height spaces that link the lower floor with the main spatial experience of the building. Student services are arranged at ground level on the first floor, with administrative and faculty offices on floors two through five; this horizontal arrangement of programs minimizes the need for vertical circulation of students and faculty.
