Higher Education

University of Illinois School of Art + Design

Champaign, Illinois | Unbuilt, 2019
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The Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois School of Art + Design pre­pares artists, design­ers, his­to­ri­ans, and edu­ca­tors to make a dif­fer­ence in broad areas of cul­ture, schol­ar­ship, and pro­fes­sion­al practice. 

Spread across thir­teen loca­tions, the School charged the design team with study­ing the ped­a­gog­i­cal, spa­tial, and finan­cial oppor­tu­ni­ties a cohe­sive build­ing could provide. 

At the edge of a new ​“Design Quad”, the expand­ed Art + Design build­ing unites the Kran­nert Art Muse­um, Link Gallery, and Siebel Cen­ter for Design to form a nexus of cre­ativ­i­ty and inno­va­tion. This new hub is posi­tioned to become a life-long-gate­way to the arts; a goal of the Col­lege and School. Stu­dio and lab­o­ra­to­ry space fills present and pro­ject­ed needs while forg­ing new part­ner­ships with the Cham­paign-Urbana Fab­ri­ca­tion Lab and the Kran­nert Art Museum’s Edu­ca­tion Department.

The select­ed scheme focus­es on the cre­ation of a sin­gu­lar build­ing that shrouds the exist­ing Art + Design com­plex in a series of class­rooms, lab­o­ra­to­ries, offices, col­lab­o­ra­tion spaces, and a court­yard. A stitch between Kran­nert Art Muse­um and the aca­d­e­m­ic build­ing is re-visioned as the ​“Com­mons”; a trans­formable space for events, lec­tures, exhibits, and the Fab­ri­ca­tion Lab. 

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Krannert Museum 1959 (courtesy of the University of Illinois Archives)

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Krannert Art Museum and Art + Design Building 2019

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The Art + Design Build­ing was con­struct­ed as the Fine and Applied Arts Build­ing between 1958 – 1959. Designed by Richard­son, Sev­erns, Scheller & Asso­ciates, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Mit­tel­bush­er & Tourtelot, the aca­d­e­m­ic facil­i­ty was com­plet­ed in tan­dem with Kran­nert Art Museum.

With a lin­ear dou­ble loaded cor­ri­dor, the class­room build­ing is con­nect­ed to the Muse­um by the Link Gallery: a space ded­i­cat­ed to the exhi­bi­tion and dis­play of stu­dent work.

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The design process includ­ed sig­nif­i­cant input and col­lab­o­ra­tion from fac­ul­ty and staff across the School. One of the tools uti­lized dur­ing a series of char­rettes asked par­tic­i­pants to ran­dom­ly gen­er­ate a sce­nario that involved a space, group size, func­tion, and ambiance. As sit­u­a­tions were gen­er­at­ed, no mat­ter how real­is­tic they may be, teams were chal­lenged to think about the end­less uses the new build­ing may take on; intend­ed and unintended.

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Core to the design con­cept is the cre­ation of improved instruc­tion­al envi­ron­ments. The expan­sion is posi­tioned to take advan­tage of the north­ern light; wash­ing stu­dios and mak­er spaces with qual­i­ty ambiance for creation. 

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For the first time, the Art + Design pro­gram will cohab­i­tate in a sin­gu­lar struc­ture. Fac­ul­ty, staff, under­grad­u­ate, and grad­u­ate stu­dents will have greater oppor­tu­ni­ties for inten­tion­al and unin­ten­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion; enrich­ing the cur­ricu­lum and cre­ation for all. 

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