May 12, 2008 1:01 pm US/Central
U Of C Library Gets $25M Donation
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
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Renowned Chicago-based architect Helmut Jahn designed the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library for the University of Chicago, which will be a partially underground facility topped with a glass dome.
Courtesy University of Chicago
The University of Chicago has unveiled designs for a new glass-domed library designed by celebrated Chicago architect Helmut Jahn.
The $80 million library, which will be partially underground, will have space for 3.5 million volumes, making the University of Chicago the country's sole top academic research library to keep its entire collection on campus.
The new building will be funded in part by a $25 million gift from U of C alumni Joe and Rika Mansueto. Joe Mansueto is chairman and CEO of Morningstar, Inc.
"This library combines three of our passions: great design, the free exchange of information and the University of Chicago. That's why Rika and I couldn't be more thrilled to be a part of this project," said Joe Mansueto.
The Joe and Rika Mansueto Library will be just west of the existing Joseph Regenstein Library at South Ellis Avenue and East 57th Street. Construction will begin this summer, and the new library will open in the fall of 2010.
"Physical location and academic mission are inseparable," University of Chicago President Robert J. Zimmer said. "This collection of immense scholarly value will be housed, preserved and delivered to our community in a state-of-the-art environment."
The new library will include a state-of-the-art conservation and preservation facility, a special collections service area, a grand reading room and the capacity for 3.5 million volumes of print material, which will be contained in a high-density, automated shelving system.
The system, which requires only a fraction of the space of regular stacks, will allow users to retrieve material stored in the system within minutes by use of a crane, unlike off-site storage facilities, where it may take days to receive requested material.
"In a place with this much history, real newness cannot just be physically new, but needs to be so spiritually," Jahn said. "We believe that this can be achieved through an innovative attitude and ideas about advanced technology and sensibility toward energy and ecology. The result can be the library of the future."
Joe and Rika Mansueto are University of Chicago graduates — he received his bachelor's degree in business administration from the College in 1978 and his M.B.A. from the Graduate School of Business in 1980; she received her bachelor's degree in anthropology from the College in 1991.
"Like most students at the University of Chicago, we found the Library to be a central part of the experience. Our typical days included going to Regenstein every night," Joe Mansueto said. "It was really interwoven into our daily routines at the University of Chicago. So when we were looking to give a gift to the school, a new library resonated with us."
The library isn't the first university building that Jahn has designed here in Chicago. He also designed State Street Village, the steel and glass dormitories at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Those dorms sit just west of the CTA Green Line.
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