The southern reaches of Chicago’s South Loop might seem an odd place for a college academic building: The neighborhood is a gritty mix of warehouses, surface parking lots, loft conversions, and recently constructed residential towers.

A 98,000-square-foot, seven-level building that includes architecture and painting studios, exhibition galleries, a reading room, classrooms, faculty offices, a café, a dining room, a green roof, and, below ground, a 500-seat performance and event space as well as a 100-seat black-box theater.

A four-story, 55,000-square-foot addition to the university's Rio Piedras campus, housing undergraduate classrooms as well as faculty and administrative offices.