Here Are The Latest Designs For A Slimmed-Down Lucas Museum

By Emma G. Gallegos in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 18, 2015 5:40PM

Designs for the Lucas Museum (Lucas Museum of Narrative Art)

Designs for the controversial lakefront Lucas Museum have been revamped.

The blobby, dune-like design essentially looks the same, though it has been slimmed down and tweaks have been made all around. The designs will be presented to city leaders next week, even as a pending lawsuit against the museum remains unresolved.

The Tribune reports that the entire museum is 25 percent smaller than before. There's more green space, more windows, less parking and three theaters instead of four. The entire grounds take up 25 acres. The museum itself now takes up 300,000 square feet in the latest designs. There will be 4.6 acres of open space, including an "event prairie," a walkway, pavilion and nature-scape along the lakefront. It stands 136 feet 6 inches tall, which makes it shorter than the nearby Soldier Field and taller than McCormick Place.

There will be 300 parking spaces underneath the museum, and 560 spaces on the event prairie parkland. A parking deck is planned for a site west of Lake Shore Drive.

Friends of the Parks, who filed the aforementioned lawsuit against the museum, are still fighting the museum on its choice of location. The group's lawyer Michael Persoon complains that this design robs the city of open space: "I would think it's problematic that the city allows billionaires who want to build a museum to just come in and give away the land for a song."

Jeanne Gang is working on the landscape design, and Ma Yansong is designing the building. Here are the latest renderings:

Latest design (Lucas Museum of Narrative Art)

An aerial view that shows what this area looks like now and what it will look like after (Lucas Museum of Narrative Art)

What it will look like from the outside to visitors (Lucas Museum of Narrative Art)

An interior view (Lucas Museum of Narrative Art)

An aerial view showing how the Lucas Museum will fit in with the rest of the area (Lucas Museum of Narrative Art)