The Gerald Ratner Athletics Center is a $51 million athletics facility within the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

campus in the Hyde Park community area on the South Side of

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, Illinois in the United States. The building was named after University of Chicago alumnus,

Gerald Ratner Gerald Irving Ratner (born 1 November 1949) is a British businessman. He was formerly chief executive officer of the major British jewellery company Ratners Group (now the Signet Group). He achieved notoriety after making a speech in which h ...

. The architect of this suspension structure that is supported by masts, cables and

counterweight A counterweight is a weight that, by applying an opposite force, provides balance and stability of a mechanical system. The purpose of a counterweight is to make lifting the load faster and more efficient, which saves energy and causes less wea ...

s was César Pelli, who is best known as the architect of the

Petronas Towers The Petronas Towers, also known as the Petronas Twin Towers or KLCC Twin Towers, ( Malay: ''Menara Berkembar Petronas'') are 88-storey supertall skyscrapers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, standing at . From 1998 to 2003, they were officially desig ...

. The Ratner Athletics Center was approved for use in September 2003. The facility includes, among other things: a competition

gym A gymnasium, also known as a gym, is an indoor location for athletics. The word is derived from the ancient Greek term " gymnasium". They are commonly found in athletic and fitness centres, and as activity and learning spaces in educational i ...

nasium, a multilevel fitness facility, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a multipurpose

dance studio A dance studio is a space in which dancers learn or rehearse. The term is typically used to describe a space that has either been built or equipped for the purpose. Overview A dance studio normally includes a smooth floor covering or, if used fo ...

, meeting room space, and athletic department offices. It serves as home to several of the university's athletic teams and has hosted numerous

National Collegiate Athletic Association The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges ...

Division III In sport, the Third Division, also called Division 3, Division Three, or Division III, is often the third-highest division of a league, and will often have promotion and relegation with divisions above and below. Association football *Belgian Thir ...

regional and

University Athletic Association The University Athletic Association (UAA) is an American athletic conference that competes in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) Division III. Member schools are highly selective universities located in Georgia, Illinois, M ...

conference championship events. Located at the southwest corner of Ellis Avenue and 55th Street, the Ratner Center has an award-winning design that uses a complex external mast-and-

system instead of interior support devices, allowing for large open-space areas inside the building. Cesar Pelli & Associates Inc. was credited as the design architect and OWP/P was the architect of record.

History

A ceremonial groundbreaking was held for the Ratner Center on October 28, 2000. The Ratner Center opened to the public on September 29, 2003, although it was not officially dedicated until

homecoming Homecoming is the tradition of welcoming back alumni or other former members of an organization to celebrate the organization's existence. It is a tradition in many high schools, colleges, and churches in the United States, Canada and Liberia. ...

weekend on October 11. The building, which represented a collaboration between Cesar Pelli & Associates and Chicago's OWP/P, was the first new athletic facility on the University of Chicago campus in 68 years. It was a part of a $500 million University-wide capital improvement plan that occurred between 1999 and 2005. Part of the plan included the Pelli-designed parking structure across the street from the Athletics Center. The parking structure is named the Gerald Ratner Athletics Center Parking Structure. The athletic center is known for its innovative asymmetrically supported cable-stayed structural system and S-shaped roofs. It is composed of a masted building to the north containing the Myers-McLoraine Swimming Pool, a masted building to the south containing the gymnasia, and a central building containing the Bernard DelGiorno fitness center. Ratner Center map

Ratner, Ph.B.,’35, J.D.,’37, contributed $15 million toward the $51 million cost. He was a

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal ...

graduate and played for the

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

team during the time that the university participated in the

Big Ten Conference The Big Ten Conference (stylized B1G, formerly the Western Conference and the Big Nine Conference) is the oldest Division I collegiate athletic conference in the United States. Founded as the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representati ...

. After graduating from the law school,

Order of the Coif The Order of the Coif is an honor society for United States law school graduates. The name is a reference to the ancient English order of advocates, the serjeants-at-law, whose courtroom attire included a coif—a white lawn or silk skullcap, whi ...

, he eventually founded his own law firm Gould & Ratner in 1949. Helen Myers McLoraine, also an alumnus from the 1930s, contributed in excess of $5 million to fund the swimming pool. Bernard DelGiorno — a gymnast with many degrees from the university: AB’54, AB’55, MBA’55 — has made numerous donations including a $5 million one in 2006 to fund athletic facilities as well as other infrastructure on campus. DelGiorno worked in industrial relations and personnel at a steel plant before becoming a stockbroker for

Paine Webber PaineWebber & Co. was an American investment bank and stock brokerage firm that was acquired by the Swiss bank UBS in 2000. The company was founded in 1880 in Boston, Massachusetts, by William Alfred Paine and Wallace G. Webber. Operating with t ...

, which became a part of UBS Financial Services.

Details

The building features the x Myers-McLoraine Swimming Pool, which can be configured with up to 20 lanes in the 25-yard dimension and nine lanes in the 50-meter dimension. The pool's configuration is flexible with a moveable bulkhead which allows for simultaneous activities. It also has a pair of one-meter diving boards. The pool depth ranges from in the shallow end and the diving well, respectively. The competition

natatorium A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, paddling pool, or simply pool, is a structure designed to hold water to enable swimming or other leisure activities. Pools can be built into the ground (in-ground pools) or built above ground (as ...

features seating for 350 spectators. The building also includes the Bernard DelGiorno fitness center. The DelGiorno Fitness Center facility occupies two levels of the Ratner center plus the rotunda area. In addition to a general fitness center, it includes a multipurpose dance studio; classroom and meeting room space; permanent and day lockers and locker rooms; the University of Chicago Athletics Hall of Fame; and the athletic department offices. The building also features a competition gym and auxiliary gym, both of which are available to recreational users. The competition gym, which is the southernmost building, accommodates practice and game site for varsity basketball, volleyball, and wrestling, but is convertible into two recreational courts. The auxiliary gym is multipurpose and can accommodate indoor soccer, as well as basketball, volleyball, and badminton.

Use

The Ratner Center also serves as the home of the University of Chicago basketball, volleyball, and wrestling teams. The 1,658-seat competition gymnasium has played host to the 2004, 2007 and 2010 University Athletic Association Wrestling Championships and the 2006 NCAA Division III Great Lakes Regional Wrestling Championship. The building also hosted the 2009 University Athletic Association Women's Volleyball Championship. The Myers-McLoraine Swimming Pool was the site of the 2005 University Athletic Association Swimming and Diving Championship. It also hosted swimming at the

2006 Gay Games The 2006 Gay Games (Gay Games VII), colloquially called the Chicago Gaymes, was part of a family of international sports and cultural festivals called Gay Games, sanctioned by the Federation of Gay Games and organized by the gay, lesbian, bise ...

. The center is available to university and hospital faculty, staff, alumni, and retirees as well as their spouses and children on a paid membership basis and registered students for free. , the University of Chicago is one of the few remaining universities in the United States to have a swimming requirement for its undergraduate degree program. Aside from the military service academies and a few of the

Ivy League The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight school ...

schools only a half dozen Universities had such a requirement as of 2006. The swimming pool is the location of the administration of the two-lap requirement. The facilities memberships are available to students as well as University and hospital faculty, staff, alumni and retirees, as well as spouses and children. Registered students' memberships are free. The building is complemented at the university by its predecessors the

Henry Crown Field House Henry Crown Field House is an athletic facility on the campus of the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois. Construction of the building took place in 1931 on land owned by the university. The cost of construction, however; was covered by ...

and the modern incarnation of Stagg Field, which will continue to augment the athletic facilities needs of the campus patrons. Features of the indoor Henry Crown Field House include a 200-meter indoor running track;

racquetball Racquetball is a racquet sport and a team sport played with a hollow rubber ball on an indoor or outdoor court. Joseph Sobek invented the modern sport of racquetball in 1950, adding a stringed racquet to paddleball in order to increase velo ...

, handball and

squash Squash may refer to: Sports * Squash (sport), the high-speed racquet sport also known as squash racquets * Squash (professional wrestling), an extremely one-sided match in professional wrestling * Squash tennis, a game similar to squash but pla ...

courts; multipurpose courts; a multipurpose room; and cardiovascular and weight training equipment. The Stagg Field outdoor complex includes a 400-meter track, eight

tennis courts A tennis court is the venue where the sport of tennis is played. It is a firm rectangular surface with a low net stretched across the centre. The same surface can be used to play both doubles and singles matches. A variety of surfaces can be u ...

, and fields for

softball Softball is a game similar to baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Softball is played competitively at club levels, the college level, and the professional level. The game was first created in 1887 in Chicago by George Hanc ...

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...

and soccer.

Design

The construction employed of steel. The roof of the gym is supported by a pair of steel masts. The pool's roof is supported by three masts. Each mast is composed of three diameter steel hollow structural sections (HSS) filled with high-strength concrete that are arranged in a tapered tied-column configuration. The German-import masts are united by 120 high-strength steel cables that total approximately in length. They are inclined at a 10 degree angle from vertical. Each tapered composite mast that supports the flattened S-shaped roof girders is supported by 15 splaying cables; 9 fore-stay cables and 6 backstay cables. During construction, the masts were filled with cast-in-place concrete using innovative pumping techniques. Concrete counterweights totaling — with some as large as — counteract the weight of the roof from below the ground. The masts and counterweights are likened as external form-giving elements to

flying buttress The flying buttress (''arc-boutant'', arch buttress) is a specific form of buttress composed of an arch that extends from the upper portion of a wall to a pier of great mass, in order to convey lateral forces to the ground that are necessary to pu ...

es in

gothic architecture Gothic architecture (or pointed architecture) is an architectural style that was prevalent in Europe from the late 12th to the 16th century, during the High and Late Middle Ages, surviving into the 17th and 18th centuries in some areas. It ...

, which predominates the campus' architecture. The building is said to interpret gothic architecture through structural expressionism. The exterior support design made the interior space more receptive to open natural lighting and more accommodating for free movement. The roof design incorporated multi-level splayed cables so that the structural roof members could form a deep uniformly curved roof plane. The roof members are curved and shallow. They support 7 thick metal roof deck spans between the roof girders. The W33x169 girders are cold bent with reverse curves to multiple radii. The curved roof planes are suspended from German "full-lock" steel cables and include three outer layers of interlocking Z-shaped wires designed to minimize water infiltration and corrosion. The engineering of the masts was complicated because stability was so important to the overall design success of the suspension structure. Mast displacements could significantly alter cable length and tension and redistribute loads through the superstructure contrary to design. The key to successful design was control of the

foundation Foundation may refer to: * Foundation (nonprofit), a type of charitable organization ** Foundation (United States law), a type of charitable organization in the U.S. ** Private foundation, a charitable organization that, while serving a good cause ...

settlement. The sites natural underlying subsurface conditions were stiff silty

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...

below a medium dense sand layer, which was determined to be too accommodating to settlement to host the structure. Ground improvement, consisting of triple-fluid jet grouting, was performed to reduce the compressibility of the silty clay, stiffen the sand deposit and provide a desirable shallow foundation system. This site marked the first time that these geotechnical ground improvement techniques were employed.

Reception

The facility's engineering and design has earned it awards from the American Council of Engineering Companies, the American Institute of Steel Construction, and the Consulting Engineers Council of Illinois. The building earned a Merit Award in the category of new buildings in the $30 million and over category in the National Council of Structural Engineers Associations 2004 Excellence in Structural Engineering Awards program. The building earned the 2003 Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement of the Year award by the

American Society of Civil Engineers American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

and the 2004 Project of the Year Overall by ''Midwest Construction News''.

Notes

External links

Official webpage

''Structure Magazine'' archived news article

from modernsteel.com
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