Since its founding in 1974 by a group of high school students aspiring to be actors, Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater has evolved from a scrappy incubator of local talent to an internationally acclaimed cultural powerhouse. Along the way, several of its productions have moved to Broadway, where they have won 12 Tony Awards, and the company has been awarded the National Medal of Arts. Its quarters have grown from a church basement in suburban Highland Park to a campus of three adjacent buildings dominating a block of prime commercial real estate in the upscale Lincoln Park neighborhood on the Near North Side. The newest of these is the recently completed $54-million Liz and Eric Lefkofsky Arts and Education Center, designed by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture.