Chicago, Illinois, USA
By Christian Narkiewicz-Laine
To say that the “City of Modern Architecture” had reached a slump in architectural talent and bravado in recent decades would be an understatement while local Chicago architects for the last several years have produced countless works of mediocre, outmoded, stale, and uninspired buildings in the city center and beyond.
However, all that is about to change with the Dutch architecture studio OMA and Dallas-based Jacobs’ new design for an eye-catching all-glass-and-metal dome in Chicago that will serve as the headquarters for the American research organization Discovery Partners Institute, injecting a much-needed new zest, energy, and adrenaline into the city’s landmark collection of world-famous buildings produced from the last millennia.
Shohei Shigematsu and OMA together with Jacobs have designed a strikingly ambitious, future-looking building positioned in the 78 Innovation District that will be an immediate, instant new landmark in Chicago’s downtown Loop.
Joining OMA in the role of lead design architect Jacobs will serve as prime and executive architect as well as lab planning consultant.
“Our interdisciplinary team believes strongly in a collaborative approach to design, and with a long history of working together, we know how to approach the unique and exciting challenges of the project—elevating the process and the outcomes,” states Kitts Christov, Vice President at Jacobs.
“OMA/Jacobs and our partners are truly honored to be leading this legacy project that will create enduring social and economic value to our communities, the Greater Chicago Metropolitan Area and the State of Illinois.”
The 78 is a planned mega-development led by developer Related Midwest to transform 62-acres into a new innovation district along the Chicago River.
Illinois is committing $500 million in capital funding to launch DPI and establish regional Illinois Innovation Network hubs at universities throughout the state.
Located on a one-acre site within The 78, the new curvilinear eight-story structure will be built as the headquarters of the Discovery Partners Institute (DPI), a part of The University of Illinois System, will anchor the district.
Related Midwest donated the 1-acre site to DPI, which is part of the U of I System, for its new South Loop headquarters.
“DPI cultivates opportunities for research, learning, and innovation to diverse communities, requiring an architecture that adapts to continued growth of its programs. We wanted to provide a building that fosters interdisciplinary interaction and experimentation,” states OMA’s design lead Shohei Shigematsu.
“Programs are organized to maximize efficiency and potential to converge, and variegated layouts are configured around a central zone of collisions.”
“A soft, transparent form and public ground floor offer an open invitation for the community to the building and its network.”
As the first project to break ground at The 78, the 200,000-square-foot (18,580-square-metrer) building will signal the beginning of a transformation—one that will connect South Loop and Chinatown, filling the 62-acre void that has long separated them.
At this significant moment, the new DPI headquarters reflects the ambition to make new links to existing areas and communities surrounding it.
Its multi-directional form is impartial to any one specific direction, maximizing the potential to create strong connections to neighborhoods on all “sides” of the building, adjacent riverfront, and future phases of the innovation district at The 78.
The building will have a high-visibility glazed facade punctuated with horizontal metal panels that will serve as solar shades,
The base of the building reinforces an openness to the city by populating the ground-floor with spaces shared with the public.
The towers define horizontal floorplans of mixed program configurations to encourage interaction across the building’s varied and multi-disciplinary users.
The building will drive innovation and orthogonal collaboration, drawing from a variety of and seemingly unrelated perspectives to foster new insights.
A café, auditorium, exhibition space and multipurpose rooms offer opportunities for indoor-outdoor activities, extending DPI’s reach to the public realm and landscape.
The building’s main entry is located at 15th Street and Wells-Wentworth, with additional entries placed east-west through the building to create porosity across the site.
The open and accessible ground plane will expand the domain of activities to welcome the public
On the upper levels, the traditional spaces for work and education are diversified to provide both formal and informal, prescribed and ad-hoc environments for meeting, learning and collaboration.
Topping the structure is a rooftop event space ringed by an outdoor terrace while the lush street-level landscape, featuring a sculpture by Richard Hunt, is open and accessible to the public.
The building’s key programs–classrooms, offices, experimental and computational labs–are stacked together for greatest efficiency and useability and organized into “towers.”
The soaring social atrium is designed as an “active collision zone,” at the heart of the building and will serve as a central gathering place for researchers, students, and others to connect outside of a more formal lab or classroom setting.
“Within the atrium, carefully coordinated stairs and meeting rooms forge loosely but intentionally defined paths and destinations to draw in and encourage users to navigate areas outside of their disciplines,” OMA explains.
An atrium with flexible circulation and collaborative spaces at the heart of the building will become an active collision zone. The 78.
The interior programs are enclosed in a high-performance, high-visibility façade, exposing the energy of DPI’s new headquarters without compromising comfort.
Solid, horizontal metal panels provide integrated solar shading for optimal interior conditions.
With optimized transparency, the building will maintain views to and from surrounding neighborhoods, the Chicago River, and the Loop skyline, becoming a beacon and invitation.
With plans to begin construction in 2024, the DPI headquarters will be the first structure to break ground on The 78.
OMA’s new building with its world-class architecture upholds and continues Chicago’s tradition of innovative design.
Project: Discovery Partners Institute Headquarters
Architects: Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)
Design Team: Shohei Shigematsu, Christy Cheng, and Jake Forster
Executive Architects: Jacob
Interior Architects: Koo Architecture
Landscape Architects: Living Habitats LLC.
Innovation Design Consultants: IDEO LLC.
Façade and Structural Engineers: Thornton Tomasetti with Stearn Joglekar
Sustainability Consultants: Atelier Ten and UpFront Regenerative Design
Developer: Related Midwest
Clients: The University of Illinois School System, Discovery Partners Institute (DPI) and Illinois Capital Development Board (CDB)
