University of Chicago Lillie House
Master Plan, Concepts & Facility Condition Analysis
Guiding the University of Chicago Lab School through a series of visioning charettes, Architecture Is Fun and the design team developed concepts to re-purpose and re-imagine a historic campus property to further learning and engagement.
Working with the school, staff, students, and vested constituents and neighbors, the Architecture Is Fun concepts for the Lillie House create an education and policy center.
This incubator would be a community space, open to experimentation, exchange, and entrepreneurship. Building on the history and activism of the Lillie’s, concepts for civic engagement and fellowship would forge a social space. The designs adapted the traditional library space to become more of a cabinet of curiosities, while the kitchen could become a teaching laboratory about nutrition, wellness, and empower innovators changing lives through food.
The former basement could be transformed, creating an interactive teaching space, more akin to hands-on museum spaces, for the school to use and program.
This exploratory space takes students out of their classroom, allowing them to focus on project-based learning. Within a less formal environment, students and teachers immerse themselves with artifacts, material, advocacy, and content. Learning together, students observe, study, and act, one project at a time.
The master plan and resulting concepts ensure historic guidelines are met, while forging spaces for the school and community to use and engage with in more deliberate, social, and expressive ways.
