Architect Chosen For Depaul's New McCormick Place Arena
By Chuck Sudo in News on Sep 23, 2013 8:35PM
The Metropolitain Pier and Exposition Authority announced Monday the architectural firm of Pelli Clarke Pelli would design the proposed 10,000-seat arena near McCormick Place that will be the new home for DePaul’s men’s basketball team. The Connecticut-based firm has designed some of the world’s most identifiable buildings such as the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, Hong Kong’s International Finance Centre and the World Financial Center in New York. They also have an established working relationship with DePaul as the designer of its theatre school.
“We have designed a light, luminous event center that we hope will be a good neighbor and a dynamic expression of the events that it will house,” said Fred Clarke, FAIA, senior principal of Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects. “Its gently arching roof, visible from surrounding buildings and streets, will tie architecture to the image of DePaul basketball and McCormick Place events.”
Pelli Clarke Pelli’s designs, which will be tweaked after discussions with neighborhood groups, features a sloping roof and an below-street-level arena floor visible to pedestrians from Cermak Road. The roof allows for lower support walls and will be a slightly innovative edition to the somewhat staid architecture of McCormick Place. Tribune architectural critic Blair Kamin compares the design to Yale University’s “Ingalls Rink” hockey arena, yet feels it needs more to make it stand on its own.
The big move, the humpback roof, is meant to give the arena a sculptural "fifth facade," visible from surrounding hotel rooms or blimps (assuming DePaul basketball would again warrant such television coverage). Supported by gently curving steel trusses, the roof could look dazzling, both from above and from within, creating a great interior space whose robust curves would be accentuated with skylights by day and artificial lighting by night.And yet, renderings of views at street-level reveal a disappointing disconnect between the roof's curvilinear drama and the building's pervasive right-angled geometry. It's as though this were two buildings — or, perhaps, a conventional, flat-roofed one with a big mountain stuck on top for effect. Compared to the masterful "Yale Whale," the result is an architectural hybrid, not a persuasive synthesis that gives us architecture with a capital A. Competition-winning designs are often revised for the better; that should happen in this case.
Pelli Clarke Pelli received a $7.2 million contract from McPier to design the arena. The $173 million project is controversial for the $33 million in tax increment financing it will receive from the city at a time when Chicago Public Schools is closing schools and slashing budgets for schools across the district. DePaul and McPier are each earmarking $70 million toward the project.