Loyola Academy Center for the Performing Arts

Project Details

Project Description

This striking new performing arts center will transform the northeast corner of Loyola Academy’s campus with flexible indoor and outdoor performance spaces that support a vibrant arts program for all students.

The 29,000-square-foot building is strategically positioned to form a new campus quadrangle and outdoor plaza that will function as an open-air performance stage and a social and gathering space for the entire Loyola community. A 125-linear-foot undulating curved glass wall will blur the distinction between indoor and outdoor spaces.

Inside, a spacious lobby and gallery space will lead to the Leemputte Family Theater, a 565-seat proscenium theater with a balcony, orchestra pit, fly tower, and state-of-the-art lighting and production technologies. Adjacent to the theater is an offstage rehearsal and staging area; a fully equipped scene shop; a green room; makeup and dressing rooms; and a flexible student lounge connecting the center to the fine arts wing on the east side of Loyola’s Wilmette campus.

Students in Loyola’s American Institute of Architecture (AIA) student chapter played an active role in the planning and design process to ensure the performing arts center will benefit the entire campus community. Parents, donors, and other community stakeholders have also been engaged throughout project development.

The Jesuit commitment of “Caring for Our Common Home”—the 2015 encyclical by Pope Francis that calls on all people of the world to take swift and unified global action considering environmental degradation and global warming—guided the project’s sustainability goals, which also align with KSP’s commitment as a signatory firm in the AIA 2030 Commitment to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

The all-electric building will further reduce carbon emissions as the Chicagoland grid continues its transition to all-renewable fuel sources by 2035. High-efficiency building systems will be installed in anticipation of a future rooftop-mounted photovoltaic array that accommodates the building’s entire energy load.

The building is predominantly precast concrete, a strategic material that performs as enclosure and structure while also providing mass for acoustic performance, a requirement given the project’s direct adjacency to the Edens Expressway. The use of fly ash in both the precast and cast-in-place concrete will reduce the carbon footprint of the concrete by 30 percent. An additional 10 percent reduction in embodied carbon will be achieved by using CO2 mineralization process in the cast-in-place concrete. The total carbon impact of these materials is equivalent to converting the 20-acre Loyola Academy Wilmette campus into an old-growth oak forest for 30 years.