EXERCISE 02: STUDIO PRECEDENT

The Joe and Rika Mansueto Library

Chris Hutton & Jacob Cherry

Helmut Jahn was born in Nuremberg, Germany in the midst of war in 1940. His first official architectural schooling occurred at the Technische Hochschule (Technical University) of Munich from 1960 to 1965. Here Jahn’s education was primarily focused on the means and methods of architectural construction, of which influence is shown in the technical mastery of many of Jahn’s buildings. After graduation he emigrated to the United States to attend graduate school at Illinois Institute of Technology, but never finished his master’s degree due to the fact that IIT only allowed dissertation from students who completed undergraduate and graduate courses at the institute. Jahn was instantly struck by the Seagram building upon his arrival to the US, which laid the foundation of a lifetime of architectural creation influenced by Mies van der Rohe. He went to Chicago to enroll in IIT, and applied for position at Mies’s office along the way, which proved unsuccessful. At IIT, Jahn studied under Myron Goldsmith, Fazlur Kahn, and David Sharpe, who are all well-known for their studies of structures in tall buildings, and was imbued with a fascination of tall structures. Following his education at IIT, Jahn got a job at C.F. Murphy with Gene Summers, a former Mies assistant, which began his practicing career. He quickly would become the Executive Vice President and Director of Planning and Design at the firm, and eventually take sole control the firm now named Murphy/Jahn. In 2012, Jahn renamed the firm to JAHN, and announced the firm’s eventual successor, Francisco Gonzalez Pulido.

Helmut Jahn’s work often defies categorization. While many of his works fit squarely into the Post-modern style (One Liberty Place, Philadelphia; Messeturm, Frankfurt), others bridge International and Post-modern, combining the aesthetics of structural expression and reactive forms to create a hybridized architecture (Kemper Arena, Kansas City; United Airlines Terminal, Chicago; Hotel Kempinski, Munich).

Jahn’s influences clearly originate in modernism, he embraced modernism’s architectural ideas: the expression of volume rather than mass, the expression of structure, visual weightlessness, and the celebration of light as building material; however, his works break from the pure Modernist oppressive expression of rectilinear form (James R Thompson Center 1985). More mature than the postmodern application of ornament (which he surely used on the Park Avenue Tower), Jahn’s later work utilizes structure as as an inseparable ornament through which formal expression is realized (Sony Center, Berlin, 2000; Cologne Bonne Airport, Cologne, 2004); though, his latest works gravitate towards an engineered aesthetic. It is unlikely that one would find a recent work not predominantly clad in glass, as this has emerged as Jahn’s facade rendering material of choice.

Technical Research Project

The Joe and Rika Mansueto Library epitomizes Jahn’s struggle for stylistic expression. The library is an irregular glass dome, elliptical in plan, with a shell that rises 35 feet above a pristine lawn. It defies comparison to any building on campus and neither is it self-referential. The structure is simple and celebrated. Solid milled nodes connect steel pipes that arc high above a natural-toned wood floor. The glass envelope is pushed outward. The one-story reading room of the Mansueto is connected to the adjacent Regenstein Library (Netsch of SOM, 1970) through an elevated glass enveloped bridge that spans 90 feet. This is the only entrance to the building.

Much like Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion (1929), where Kolbe’s Alba creates tension and anticipation to become part of the architectural expression, Jahn’s Mansueto Library reacts to Moore’s Nuclear Energy (1967) as an inherent design element. Moore described Nuclear Energy as being “like an architectural cathedral”,

and hoped that people would “go around it, looking out through the open spaces”. The Mansueto Library is Jahn’s realization of Moore’s vision. The dome’s vertical axis is canted 15 degrees to the north, acknowledging the spot where Fermi first created a controlled nuclear reaction beneath the University’s abandoned stadium viewing platform.

The University of Chicago is one of the prominent research institutions in North America. The Regenstein Library holds one of the largest book repositories in the world at over 4.5 million print volumes, and when it ran out of space, Jahn was commissioned to deliver the extension. His solution to the problem of available space was to create an underground storage facility that utilized an automated book retrieval system to optimize storage. This had two major benefits, the University’s impressive collection would remain on campus, and the underground chamber would be well insulated by the earth, allowing

for the optimal control of temperature, humidity, and light. The buildings curved geometry allowed for the deep bearing walls to resist the thrusting force of the earth.

Construction began with the slurry wall foundation. A trench was dug and filled with slurry material while a clamshell bucket excavator dug the 65 ft deep perimeter walls. The slurry would progressively fill the excavation to prevent it from buckling under pressure. Rebar cages were then inserted and tremie pipes used to fill the excavation with concrete. A massive six-feet wide by four-feet tall ring beam was made to cap the wall. Sequential excavation and tieback installation hollowed out the core and a base slab was poured. Steel columns and beams provide the support for the main floor, as well as structural stability for the book storage shelving. Metal decking was laid on the steel framing and a concrete floor was poured.

The Mansueto Library is an excellent example of a well-integrated building. All of the building’s major systems seamlessly blend with the architectural elements, resulting in clean lines and architectural expression free of clutter and distraction. The totally transparent 1-story dome eliminates the ceiling space offered by typical buildings as a space to house ductwork, pipes, conduit, and other necessary building technologies. With no hidden space to contain these systems, Jahn and the other building disciplines saught ways to integrate them into the architecture in efficient and intelligent ways. The nature of the facade system provides a gap between the steel tube structure and the glass: an opportune space to run fire suppression piping and electrical conduit that would be out of sight of the building occupants.

Air distribution and condensation control play an important role all buildings, especially in buildings that are clad entirely in glass. Again, with no ceiling space to conceal the HVAC systems, the design team utilized the ample space under the main floor to distribute the air. The most critical conditioned space is the underground book storage area and the main HVAC equipment was logically located adjacent to it, underground. The ductwork which serves the main floor spaces simply extends from the air handling units and gets routed under the floor to the diffusers above. The air enters the reading room in two ways, one, through nozzle-type diffusers located in a ring around the exterior of the building which throw the air at high velocity washing the interior face of the glass facade, and two, up through the metal columns located throughout the floor space in the reading room. In the cooling season, the air in these columns is leaked out at slow velocity, allowing it to settle down at the floor level. The cool air will remain at the occupiable floor of the reading room and warmer air will rise created stratified zones of air. Through the integration of the HVAC system with the architecture and structure of the library, the spaces are conditioned properly and efficiently without detracting from the architectural concept and integrity.

55°F 60°F30%RH

72°F30-60%RH

Integration ConditionBy locating the automated storage retrieval system (ASRS) underground, the temperature and humidity is more easily regulated, and will take less energy to keep the constant 60°F temperature and 30% relative humidity needed for the conservation of the books.

Integration Condition

Integration Condition

Using one mechanism for air distribution and lighting is an efficient design that unites architectural, mechanical, and electrical engineering efforts.

The conduit for the lighting and fire supression system are supported by the structural steel tubes, and are kept out of sight of the building users.

Jahn, Helmut, Rainer Viertlböck, Franz Schulze, Helmut Jahn, and Albrecht Bangert. Helmut Jahn: Process Progress. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2013. Print.

Flickr: University of Chicago Library. Yahoo!, n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2014. <https://www. flickr.com/photos/uchicagolibrary/sets/>.

“Henry Moore Works in Public.” Henry Moore. The Henry Moore Foundation, 2014. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.

Bibliography

Sketch Model