Chicago Construction News staff writer
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has broken ground on a $105 million building for its Gies College of Business.
The 100,000-sq. ft. Wymer Hall will include expanded studio space and recording areas to enable online courses and programs throughout campus and office space for Gies College faculty and support staff that has grown to serve online programs.
The building has been named for Steven S. Wymer, an alumnus of the Gies College and a portfolio manager at Fidelity Investments. He donated $25 million to help pay for the construction.
Construction is expected to be completed by December 2024.
LMN Architects, in collaboration with Booth Hansen, unveiled the design of the new Steven S. Wymer Hall at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
“The future of business education will include online, residential, and hybrid learning,” said Jeffrey R. Brown, professor in business. “This new facility is designed for the future and with that vision in mind.
“Even what we think of as ‘traditional’ classrooms will be able to support all types of learning, and that’s going to enable us to deliver a powerful education in exciting new ways.”
The Urbana campus has a consistent character defined by neo-Georgian buildings of brick and limestone. The project design considers the traditional aesthetic with “an immediate context of its contemporary and post-modern neighbors.”
Volumes of hand laid brick interlock with fields of quarried stone and zones of natural metal, reconstituting the traditional elements in a novel manner.
“Wymer Hall has been designed to accelerate the innovations in teaching and learning that Gies and Illinois have always pioneered,” LMN Architects principal Mark Nicol said in a statement. “The project will provide a rich experience for the residential students and enhance the online experience for remote students.
“We are excited to break ground and look forward to experiencing how the building reinforces the architectural traditions at Illinois while also looking to the future.”
Construction is expected to be completed by December 2024.
