Reflections on UIC Campus Architecture and Mixed Use Development

In this day and age of elaborate mixed use developments and conceptual community developments, it’s good to look at great and innovative models for inspiration. One such model is the UIC Campus in Chicago, just south of 290 and west of the Loop.

"A stone dropped in a pond of water," was the metaphor architect Walter Netsch of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) used to describe his design for the UICC campus.

Netsch designed the progressive campus in the Brutalist style done in heavy, rusticated concrete, Minnesota granite, and brick. Netsch's metaphor of the radiating circle was used to organize the buildings by function on a series of rings radiating out from the campus core. It’s a striking design concept, but only parts of it remain today.

The original plan had, at the center of the University, a massive elevated rooftop structure called The Circle Forum. A Greek-styled amphitheater was sunken into the roof and had other subsequent rings of Lecture Centers, large classrooms and lecture halls extending off of it. Still farther from the center were offices and laboratories, and on the farthest ring are the athletic fields.

While Netsch was the lead architect on the project for SOM, he did not directly design all the campus buildings.

Netsch’s design for Circle Campus won a number of prestigious awards, becoming a nationally known model for other "instant" campuses to be built in the 1960s and 70s. Sadly, when enrollment only reached 18,000 students instead of the projected 32,000 students, the designed walkways became superfluous, maintenance declined, and the buildings slowly crumbled. The Great Court, The Circle Forum, and the elevated walkways were demolished during the 1990s in an effort to revitalize the campus core, but at the expense of Netsch's striking vision.

Netsch was looking to create a focal point for the campus - or a “destination” that defined the overall experience at UIC. The core theme for the development was centered around congregating, creating community and interaction. Modern mixed-use developments today are aspiring to do the same with their amenity centers, activity programming or park/recreational facilities. Torque’s job has been to help our clients adapt to and understand the ever changing desires of tenants, visitors and residents.