March 31, 2016

JGMA’s Latino Student Center Bounces Highway Noise and Manipulates Sunlight

To provide educational opportunities to the Latino community of Chicago, Northeastern Illinois University opened a satellite campus and hired JGMA to build the student center. El Centro cuts a striking figure against its surroundings, along a highway in a drab industrial corridor. Slender canary-yellow fins march across the glass curtain wall to perform two separate functions. The first purpose is acoustical: bouncing highway noise away from the 60,000-square-foot interior. “Their angle of inclination also allows sunlight to penetrate the student lounges during winter while deflecting the direct rays in summer,” JGMA president Juan Gabriel Moreno says. He should be familiar with strong sun—he grew up in Bogota, Colombia.

> See more from the March 2016 issue of Interior Design

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