Architect 2016-01

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Valerio Dewalt Train Associates’ Gordon Parks Arts
Hall sails onto the University of Chicago’s Hyde
Park campus like a 21st-century luxury liner: its
block-long bulk carefully crafted with a sleek profile
whose expression meshes with the surrounding
buildings, while still illustrating compelling forms
driven by ideas about architecture and education. The
building anchors the northern end of a multibuilding
subcampus that houses three of the four gradebased
“units” that comprise the university’s pre-K–12
Laboratory Schools, which were founded by John
Dewey as an experiment in pre-collegiate education.
Gordon Parks Arts Hall (GPAH) is the most
recently completed portion of a comprehensive master
plan for the Lab Schools that clocks in at more than
539,000 square feet, including new construction of
an off-site early-learning center and renovation of the
existing buildings (now nearing completion). Chicagobased
Valerio Dewalt Train Associates’ (VDTA)
principal Joseph Valerio, FAIA, clinched the commission
for the plan in 2008, when he gave the school’s highpowered
board a one-word answer for where to start
their architectural explorations. “Research,” he said.
“Joe went into great depth, contacting futurists and
educators,” says the school’s director emeritus David
W. Magill. The result was a six-volume 2009 report
called “Future of Education: Research.” The “Lab+”
master plan positions GPAH as the principal new
structure on the school’s two-city-block campus. The
“front” door for the complex has always been Blaine
Hall, which faces the Frederick Law Olmsted–designed
Midway Plaisance. Gothic limestone-clad structures to
the south, east, and west, added piecemeal since 1903,
are an ensemble of dormered and gargoyled buildings
that form a piece with the university’s larger campus,
dubbed the “Gray City.” But the north end of the Lab
Schools’ block always had a distinct role: Dewey built
it at the outset, and conceived of its workshops as a
“maker place.” “We saw the opportunity to honor this
legacy by creating a building for the ‘makers’ of the
21st century,” Valerio says.
As a whole, the university (of which the Lab
Schools are a part) has actively sought a more
contemporary look to complement its older Gothic
structures. Recent projects by Tod Williams Billie Tsien
Architects | Partners (Reva and David Logan Center
for the Arts), Rafael Viñoly Architects (Graduate
School of Business), Diller Scofidio + Renfro (David
M. Rubenstein Forum, in design), and Studio Gang
(North Residence Hall and Dining Commons, under
construction) all nod to this forward-looking initiative.
GPAH’s three-story plan is based on a doubleloaded
corridor, with the large spaces of the Assembly
Hall—a 750-seat theater-in-the-round that sits just
inside the entry—and the black box theater on the
south side of the structure and learning spaces along
the north. First- and second-floor teaching spaces are
devoted to music, with the third floor set aside for arts
and media. The theaters, which rise the full height of
the building, are clad in a simple vertical metal panel
system and face a courtyard and the Lab Schools’ 1962
International Style addition by Perkins+Will.
The building’s palette is quite simple, limited
to five materials: an exposed concrete frame, a VS-1
glass curtainwall system, metal panels (used as a
return on limestone faces), metal roof decking, and
limestone (requested by the client) that matches the
complex’s original Collegiate Gothic buildings. “We
used limestone the least, but we wanted to get the
most out of it,” Valerio says. And whether it’s the
unusual pattern of three openings within the gabled
entry façade or the vertical wall-mounted lighting
throughout the corridors, seemingly random spacings
are, in fact, based on the Fibonacci sequence: “We
didn’t want a random pattern,” Valerio says. “It’s a
hidden number sequence that kids could discover.”
VDTA’s six volumes of research on contemporary
education revealed the importance of the classroom as
the fundamental space for structured learning and the
need to foster eye contact between teacher and student.
These are central to the program, with a series of
generous spaces along the north edge of the building.
But the classroom’s pre-eminence doesn’t downgrade
the role of less structured interactions. The team’s
research notes that the most creative moments happen
within the interstitial spaces.
Magill recalls that it was a conscious decision not
to provide designed seating or otherwise structured
spaces in the halls. “Kids will find these places, and
then we can add accoutrements,” he says. Valerio is
particularly pleased with the role the western fire stairs
have begun to play. The egress stairs are tucked within
a glass-enclosed gable that faces a limestone dormer
in the 1904 Belfield Tower, creating a bright space that
visually connects old and new, inside and outside—and
draws groups of students between and after classes.
At Gordon Parks Arts Hall, VDTA has reconceived
Gothic for the 21st century. “A Collegiate Gothic
building doesn’t feel open and accessible,” Valerio says.
But by drawing upon elements loosely derived from
its Gray City environs, including Indiana limestone,
gabled forms, solar chimneys that mimic high Gothic
piers, and delicate glazing that accentuates the vertical,
Valerio has crafted a structure that feels of its time and
its place, and offers a road map for the integration of
diverse—and functional—architectural forms.