Columbia College Chicago President Dr. Warrick L. Carter and Allen M. Turner, chairman of the board of trustees, announced today the selection of Jeanne Gang & Studio Gang Architects to design Columbia’s Media Production Center (MPC), the first new construction project undertaken by the arts and media college.
Gang, whose Chicago-based firm is emerging as one of the most innovative practitioners in architecture today, was chosen from an initial field of 29 firms from across North American that were invited to submit qualifications for the project. In December, the field was narrowed to four finalist firms: Helfand Architecture of New York, Morphosis of Los Angeles, Brininstool + Lynch and Studio Gang, both of Chicago. Since that time, members of the selection team have been working with the architectural firms to determine the best fit.
“Jeanne Gang’s portfolio clearly demonstrates an understanding of each of the clients with which she has worked as well as a fresh and original approach to public architecture. However, our choice was about more than innovative design,” said Turner. “While we certainly want a building that makes a distinctive statement consistent with the image of Columbia as a cutting edge arts and media school, we were also determined to select a firm who we feel confident will bring the project in on budget, on schedule and who will work well with our in-house team of academics, administrators and creatives, while emphasizing environmental sustainability.”
“During the meetings with the finalists it became clear that Jeanne is very committed to this project and understands fully what it means to the college,” said Doreen Bartoni, dean of the School of Media Arts. “The level of research she conducted, not only on materials and program requirements, but on the history of Columbia as an educational and cultural institution and the history and current cultural currency of media arts, was truly impressive.”
Gang, who makes her own home in the South Loop not far from Columbia’s campus, is excited to be working on project that, she says “will look at the intersection of academics, media and architecture. From both a conceptual and a practical standpoint Studio Gang has an opportunity to create a building that not only meets the client’s functional needs but also expresses the importance of media arts in today’s society and the emergence of Columbia College as a major educational institution.”
A commitment to sustainable design was another important element in the search and selection. “To this point Columbia’s contribution to Chicago’s rich architectural heritage has been to rehabilitate and retrofit some of the South Loop’s most important historic buildings,” explained Carter. “In this way, we have served as stewards for Lakeside Press, now one of the college’s residence halls, and [William LeBaron] Jenney’s Ludington Building at 1104 S. Wabash. With the MPC as our first new construction, we intend to add to the City’s collection of significant buildings with a structure that is innovative in terms of the relationship between architecture and media but that also meets the commitments of an environmentally responsible institution. Jeanne Gang is eminently qualified to deliver on that goal.”
The Columbia Media Production Center will be an approximately 40,000-square-foot facility featuring two sound stages, a motion-capture studio and an animation lab and will further serve to enliven an area of the city that has enjoyed a recent boom in residential growth.
The MPC is proposed to be built at the southwest corner of 16th and State on a vacant lot currently owned by the City of Chicago. The land sale to Columbia, allowing for the construction of the facility, must be approved by the Community Development Commission and the City Council.
“I am very pleased that of all the firms we considered from across the country and Canada, Studio Gang, a Chicago-based firm was clearly the best for this project,” Turner added. “Over the years Columbia has become a major force in the educational and cultural landscape of the city and is recognized as an anchor institution in the booming South Loop. Working with a Chicago firm further demonstrates our commitment to the city and the talent we have here.”
Jeanne Gang leads Studio Gang Architects, an architectural practice located in Chicago. She received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Illinois in Urbana / Champaign in 1986. Following a fellowship at the ETH in Zurich, she attended the Harvard Graduate School of Design where she was awarded a Master of Architecture Degree with Distinction in 1993. Prior to founding Studio Gang Architects in 1998, she worked with OMA/Rem Koolhass in Rotterdam and Booth Hansen Associates in Chicago. Since 1997 she has taught design studios at the Illinois Institute of Technology, College of Architecture. She was visiting professor at the Harvard Design School in 2004, and held the Louis I. Kahn visiting professor chair at the Yale College of Architecture in 2005. Her design for the Marble Curtain was shown at the Masonry Variations Exhibition in Washington DC. The work of Studio Gang has received numerous awards and has been published and exhibited widely. Her work has been shown at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Architecture Foundation, the National Building Museum and most recently the Venice Biennale. Her focus on materials, technology and sustainability in relation to architecture is supported through a mode of working that combines practice, teaching and research. Studio Gang has a strong reputation for research and design. Today, the office counts a staff of twenty professionals. Locally, the office has undertaken the Starlight Theatre in Rockford Illinois, innovative for its movable roof, and the Chinese American Service Center in Chicago. The firm was included in Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard 2001 and part of the Architecture League of New York's Emerging Voices in Spring of 2006.
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