Page 22 - spaces4learning, July/August 2020

spaces4learning FACILITY FOCUS
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
Walter Athletics Center and Ryan Fieldhouse
By Scott Berman | Photos © Paul Kennedy
SPORTS FACILITIES ARE ABOUT COMPETITION
and recruitment as well as the nuts and bolts of space and equipment. They also can be about other things that cannot be planned with precision.
The Walter Athletics Center and Ryan Fieldhouse at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, is a case in point. Although the $270-million project opened in 2018, things have evolved there since then.
First and foremost is the complex itself, an impressive structure wrapped in glass, aluminum, and limestone on the northeast corner of the Northwestern campus, right on Lake Michigan—an enviable site not only for the dazzling lake view, but also for its proximity to the campus’ student residences, classrooms and other facilities. Further, the site is logical for another reason: it abuts related things that were already there, such as athletic fields, indoor tennis courts, a pool and some parking lots. It’s quite a change along those lines and others. Kennedy explains that the new building replaces an outmoded facility about a mile west of campus with limited indoor space. To create the response to that situation, Northwestern assembled a team that included Perkins and Will as the project architect, SmithGroup JJR as landscape architect
with irrigation engineering, and 360 Architect as the sports consultant. HOK was associate architect. Importantly, department representatives visited 70 athletic facilities, and comprehensive input on spaces by the head athletic trainer
and team physician, among others. The comprehensive, collaborative planning and design process resulted in what Perkins and Will has described in part as “transformational” and “a sleek, sophisticated destination.”
However, like the academic world today, the COVD-19 pandemic has placed the new facility’s status as a destination on hold. The exact way forward for the reopening of the Northwestern campus is unclear for the time being, but Kennedy and his colleagues, along with others across campus, remain busy. “We’re modeling a lot of different scenarios and you obviously hope that the reality matches up with one of them,” he says, reporting that related “guidance will be university-wide when we get there.”
Student-athletes, faculty and others doubtless are anticipating a return to daily use of a facility that, as the university has pointed out, has many functions. For example, the Walter Athletics Center portion of the facility houses, among
other things, “a football strength and conditioning center, meeting rooms and a sport performance center” as well as offices and a dining hall. The Ryan Fieldhouse section provides “one of the most versatile practice, competition and recreation venues in the nation.” The fieldhouse has locker rooms for various varsity sports programs and Wilson Field, which is an indoor athletic field for practice and competition in football, lacrosse and soccer. A pre-existing aquatics center has been upgraded.
The building, Perkins and Will has indicated, includes features such as “abundant ceiling-to-floor windows” that allow “in natural light at nearly every turn.” The facility, while “monumental,” yet also “seamlessly integrates with the surrounding campus, never calling too much attention to itself,” according to Perkins and Will.
Still, the complex has attracted some attention in media. Around the time of the opening, there was a barb or two about
22 jUL/AUG 2020