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Hadid and Van Berkel to Design Millennium Park Pavilions

The pavilions will be the centerpieces of next year's Burnham Plan Centennial.

Nicholas Tamarin -- Interior Design, 7/8/2008 12:00:00 AM

Already home to a Frank Gehry stage and an Anish Kapoor sculpture, Chicago’s Millennium Park is ramping up its high-design quotient with temporary pavilions designed by Zaha Hadid and UN Studio's Ben van Berkel in celebration of next year's Burnham Plan Centennial.

The centennial honors architect Daniel Burnham's 1909 Plan of Chicago, which set a national standard for urban and regional planning and provided a the city with a blueprint for improvements that were enacted throughout the 20th century. The new pavilions, slated to open next June, will be the centerpieces for a platform including hundreds of educational programs, arts events, and open-space projects throughout 2009.

In addition to the pavilions, which will feature video exhibits and programming related to the centennial, Hadid and van Berkel will participate in workshops and presentations at the Illinois Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois at Chicago, respectively.

Hadid, the first woman to receive the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize, is known for complex and fluid structures such as the Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg, Germany and the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati. Van Berkel, a rising star and chief proponent of computer-aided architecture, established his reputation with the iconic Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany.

"These two wonderful architects have done the kind of provocative thinking about buildings and metropolitan life that we intend to encourage here with the Burnham celebrations," says John Bryan, co-chair of the centennial committee. James Cuno, president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago, adds, "There is no better proof that Chicago continues to be at the leading edge of architectural innovation, just as it was in Burnham's vision."

One of two temporary pavilions at the Burnham Plan Centennial in Chicago will be designed by Ben van Berkel of UN Studio, the firm behind the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, pictured above.

Photo by Christian Richters