In late September, the University of Chicago broke ground on a $42 million addition to its Regenstein Library. Designed by Chicago’s Murphy/Jahn, it is not a wing, per se, but rather a bunker of books topped by a glass dome.

In 2005, the university commissioned Murphy/Jahn to design an addition to the Regenstein, a Walter Netsch–designed Brutalist work that anchors this predominantly Gothic campus. Although Netsch had created expansion plans for the five-story limestone building, those were nullified by a new dormitory, designed by Ricardo Legorreta Vilchis, that took over the site Netsch had wanted. Architects Helmut Jahn and Scott Pratt sketched various appendages for the Regenstein, but its self-contained form seemed to resist any attachments, says Pratt, principal architect for the project.