The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) has chosen two Columbia College Chicago publications for recognition.
Engaging, the college’s 2005 President’s Report, received the CASE gold medal in the Individual Institutional Relations Publications category. Engaging explores Columbia’s role as an innovator in arts and media education and practice through stories about the institution’s classroom and community engagement. Read it at www.colum.edu/presidentsreport.
Columbia’s flagship publication DEMO, which launched in 2005, received a CASE silver medal in the College and University General Interest Magazines category. DEMO features articles and art by and about Columbia faculty, alumni, students and staff. All four issues of DEMO can be viewed at www.colum.edu/DEMO.
Both DEMO and the President's Report were edited by Ann Wiens, director of institutional communications, and art directed by Guido Mendez, senior designer in the college's department of creative and print services. “These awards mean a lot to me, because I have so much respect and admiration for the publications we were competing with, and I’ve learned so much from them,” says Wiens. “But we really do have an unfair advantage here at Columbia, because our community is so creative, and our college culture is so welcoming and open to new ideas and artistic concepts. It’s a pleasure to create publications in this environment.”
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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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Chicago, IL--Thanks to your votes and a great film, Maria Gigante, a MFA Film & Video student and graduate teaching assistant at Columbia College Chicago has been selected as one of three finalists in mtvU’s “Best Filmmakers on Campus” contest for her short “Girls Room.”
“Girls Room” is a dark comedy that tells the tale of Sammy, a young girl, who must confront the much-feared school bathroom where she is sure to encounter terror, humiliation and isolation. However, when she finally takes matters into her own hands, she discovers that maybe she isn’t so alone after all. Gigante wrote, directed and produced the film.
On April 26 Maria had the opportunity to show her film at a special screening at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. “Girls Room” was also screened at the Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival on May 21.
Maria is headed to Los Angeles on Saturday to attend the 2007 MTV Movie Awards where the winner will be announced live during the June 3rd broadcast.
In addition to winning a trip to the MTV Movie Awards and a Golden Popcorn, the winning filmmaker will receive a development deal with MTV Films worth up to $25,000.
The wining film is chosen in large part by online voting and streams, viewing, input from MTV, mtvU and Paramount Pictures executives.
Gigante, a native of Lakewood, Ohio, says she enjoys telling intimate stories about people that hopefully make the audience feel less alone in the world. “I’m looking to make a connection with my audience. I usually accomplish the connection through a character that is slightly flawed, but eventually takes action to make themselves or their world better,” says Gigante.
Gigante’s short and feature-length screenplays have won awards around the country. In 2005 and 2006 she won the Columbia College Film and Video Department’s Written Image Screenplay Competition. “Girls Room” has been accepted to the Breckenrigde Film Festival and the Jackson Hole Film Festival. The film won the Audience Choice Award at the 40th Humbolt International Film Festival and is one of the only two United States films to screen at the 35th FICA Algarve Film Festival in Lisbona, Portugal this May.
The “Best Film on Campus” showcases short and feature length student films.
The premiere edition of Musicians Studio, Columbia College Chicago’s informative series of intimate conversations with recording artists, songwriters and music industry insiders, airs at 9 p.m. on WYCC, Channel 20, each Friday in May.
The hour-long program, hosted by Down Beat’s editor Frank Alkyer, will broadcast four new segments this month and four more in June. The shows include interviews with punk rock pioneer Bob Mould (May 4), jazz trumpeter and conductor Jon Faddis (May 11), Academy Award-nominated songwriter and recording artist Bird York (May 18), and country music singer Robbie Fulks (May 25).
Airing dates in June have not been finalized, but the remaining shows feature blues guitarist Fernando Jones, Grammy award-winning drummer Paul Wertico, Stellar award- winning gospel artist Donald Lawrence, and blues singer Shemekia Copeland.
Musicians Studio airs on Fridays (right after “Austin City Limits”) on WYCC-Channel 20.
The program is taped before a live studio audience at the Music Center Concert Hall on the Columbia College campus. Conceived as a multi-episode series for distribution on broadcast television as well as cable and DVD, Musicians Studio began production in March 2006.
The show is produced by Mary Filice, a faculty member in the college’s Arts, Entertainment, and Media Management (AEMM) Department, and directed by Chris West, operations manager for the Television Department.
The one-on-one conversational format gives the live audience a chance to learn firsthand how these musicians create and earn a living through their art, says program host Frank Alkyer. “It’s a way to meet performers and music business professionals in an entirely different way,” says Alkyer. “Artists can talk about music, rather than simply having their music speak for them.”
Deeper insights are revealed during the audience question and answer segment. "Musicians Studio works well as a teaching tool. The show engages students and gets them to apply the business and critical thinking skills they are learning. It also heightens their aesthetic awareness of the art form as well as the media production process. In so many ways, it's the perfect example of how art and business come together," explains producer Mary Filice.
Columbia students are given the opportunity to learn hands-on during the production of the shows. Filice recruits graduate and undergraduate student volunteers from the AEMM Department to assist her in the production and promotion aspects of Musicians Studio. Student volunteers assist in a variety of ways, from hanging up posters around campus, helping to line up guests, scheduling freelancers such as the make-up artist, obtaining "TV release" forms, to performing house management and marketing duties.
Television Department students also volunteer their services by taping the shows. Under the direction of the Television’s Chris West, student volunteers assist with lighting, camera work, and other technical aspects of the production. "It’s a great way for students to put into practice what they learn in their production and aesthetics classes," explains Filice.
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