Project Description
University of Chicago
1155 East 60th Street Building
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS | 185,000 SF
Sited on the historic Midway Plaisance, 1155 E. 60th Street is a low-rise mid-century office building previously repurposed for academic use. The University of Chicago selected an architectural team led by Tilton, Kelly + Bell to conduct a feasibility study for an extensive building renovation to provide enhanced visibility for the building and to best utilize the existing space for new programs.
TKB assembled space requirements for numerous academic and community outreach groups and identified overlapping constituencies and programmatic synergies. The selected approach affords high visibility to prominent programs while grouping synergistic graduate departments together to encourage spontaneous collaboration.
The first phase of interior implementation was recently completed, removing a dense warren of cellular spaces, and leveraging the building’s narrow geometry to create daylight-filled collaborative workspaces and a variety of meeting venues for faculty, researchers, and graduate students. The home for the Mansueto Institute of Urban Innovation, the space fosters interdisciplinary research, grouping scholars in collaborative settings, and provides a variety of alternate settings for focused work and both structured and serendipitous interaction.