Jay Pritzker Pavilion Informations

Coordinates: 41°52′58.83″N 87°37′18.67″W / 41.8830083°N 87.6218528°W / 41.8830083; -87.6218528

Jay Pritzker Pavilion, also known as Pritzker Pavilion or Pritzker Music Pavilion, is a bandshell in Millennium Park in the Loop community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. It is located on the south side of Randolph Street and east of the Chicago Landmark Historic Michigan Boulevard District. The pavilion was named after Jay Pritzker, whose family is known for owning Hyatt Hotels. The building was designed by architect Frank Gehry, who accepted the design commission in April 1999; the pavilion was constructed between June 1999 and July 2004, opening officially on July 16, 2004.

Pritzker Pavilion serves as the centerpiece for Millennium Park and is the home of the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the Grant Park Music Festival, the nation's only remaining free outdoor classical music series. It also hosts a wide range of music series and annual performing arts events. Performers ranging from mainstream rock bands to classical musicians and opera singers have appeared at the pavilion, which even hosts physical fitness activities such as yoga. All rehearsals at the pavilion are open to the public; trained guides are available for the music festival rehearsals, which are well-attended.

Millennium Park is part of the larger Grant Park. The pavilion, which has a capacity of 11,000, is Grant Park's small event outdoor performing arts venue, and complements Petrillo Music Shell, the park's older and larger bandshell. Pritzker Pavilion is built partially atop the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, the park's indoor performing arts venue, with which it shares a loading dock and backstage facilities. Initially the pavilion's lawn seats were free for all concerts, but this changed when Tori Amos performed the first rock concert there on August 31, 2005.

The construction of the pavilion created a legal controversy, given that there are historic limitations on the height of buildings in Grant Park. To avoid these legal restrictions, the city classifies the bandshell as a work of art rather than a building. With several design and assembly problems, the construction plans were revised over time, with features eliminated and others added as successful fundraising allowed the budget to grow. In the end, the performance venue was designed with a large fixed seating area, a Great Lawn, a trellis network to support the sound system and a signature Gehry stainless steel headdress. It features a sound system with an acoustic design that replicates an indoor concert hall sound experience. The pavilion and Millennium Park have received recognition by critics, particularly for their accessibility; an accessibility award ceremony held at the pavilion in 2005 described it as "one of the most accessible parks – not just in the United States but possibly the world".

The Jay Pritzker Pavilion is a home for the Grant Park Music Festival, which began in 1935 in the original Petrillo Music Shell. Lying between Lake Michigan to the east and the Loop to the west, Grant Park has been Chicago's front yard since the mid-19th century. Its northwest corner, north of Monroe Street and the Art Institute, east of Michigan Avenue, south of Randolph Street, and west of Columbus Drive, had been Illinois Central rail yards and parking lots until 1997, when it was made available for development by the city as Millennium Park. In 2007, Millennium Park trailed only Navy Pier as a Chicago tourist attraction.

When the city first determined that a new pavilion should be built, the commission was supposed to go to Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. The original pavilion design was much more modest than the structure that was eventually built, with a smaller shell structure and speakers affixed to poles interspersed throughout the seating area. However, two factors led to the cancellation of the original plans. First, the project's scope changed as a result of additional funds raised by John H. Bryan, former CEO of the Sara Lee Corporation. The second factor was the intervention of the Pritzker family as potential donors. Unimpressed with the pavilion's original design, Cindy Pritzker "mandated that Frank Gehry be involved in its re-design". Jay Pritzker, a prominent Chicago businessman, had died in January 1999; his family own several businesses, including Hyatt Hotels. Jay and Cindy Pritzker had founded the Pritzker Prize in architecture in 1979, and the Pritzker family's Hyatt Foundation continues to award it annually. Architect Frank Gehry had received the Pritzker Prize in 1989.

In February 1999, the city announced it was negotiating with Gehry to design a proscenium arch and orchestra enclosure for a bandshell in the new park, as well as a pedestrian bridge over Columbus Drive (which became BP Pedestrian Bridge). The city sought donors to cover Gehry's work, and the Chicago Tribune dubbed him "the hottest architect in the universe" for his acclaimed Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. The Tribune noted Gehry's designs would not include such Mayor Richard M. Daley trademarks as wrought iron and seasonal flower boxes.

Millennium Park project manager Edward Uhlir said "Frank [Gehry] is just the cutting edge of the next century of architecture," and noted that no other architect was being sought. Skidmore, Owings and Merrill architect Adrian Smith approached Gehry several times on behalf of the city, which originally asked him about doing just a facade, but Gehry was uninterested. A few months later the city asked him to get involved in Millennium Park; Gehry felt he would prefer to design a building, but that he could not complete it in time for the Millennium, and that he would need a much larger budget than the city had envisioned.

The city wanted Gehry, the donors supported him, and he was interested in the project. The key component in the modern themes strategy was Gehry's acceptance of the commission in April 1999.That month, the city announced that the Pritzker family had donated $15 million to fund Gehry's bandshell and an additional nine donors committed a total of $10 million. The day of this announcement, after it became clear that Cindy Pritzker would fund the project, Gehry agreed to the design request. In November, when his designs for both the pavilion and bridge were unveiled, Gehry already had the basic design for the bandshell, but said the bridge's design was very preliminary and not well-conceived because funding for it was not committed. The BP Pedestrian Bridge is designed to serve as a buffer against street noise, helping the pavilion's acoustics.

According to the Guggenheim Museum, the Jay Pritzker Pavilion "suggests musical qualities", much like Gehry's Experience Music Project in Seattle, Washington. The Pritzker Pavilion follows a series of open-air projects by Gehry, such as the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, the Concord Performing Arts Center in Concord, California, and numerous renovations to the Hollywood Bowl in Hollywood, California.

Jay Pritzker Pavilion cost $60 million, a quarter of which came from the Pritzker family donation. It includes 4,000 fixed seats and a 95,000-square-foot (8,800 m2) Great Lawn that can accommodate an additional 7,000 people. The pavilion was built above and behind the Harris Theater, which has the benefit that Millennium Park's indoor and outdoor performance venues share a loading dock, rehearsal rooms and other backstage facilities.

The bandshell's brushed stainless steel headdress frames the 120-foot (37 m) proscenium theatre; the main stage can accommodate a full orchestra and chorus of 150 members. The bandshell is connected to a trellis of interlocking crisscrossing steel pipes that support the innovative sound system, which mimics indoor concert hall acoustics. The pavilion has restrooms on both its east and west sides. It is one of two features in the park to include accessible restrooms; the other is McCormick Tribune Plaza and Ice Rink. The majority of the park's 123 toilet fixtures (78 for women, 45 for men) are located in underground arcades to the east and west of the pavilion, with the ones on the east being heated for winter use.

Millennium Park is built on top of a large underground parking garage. Construction started before the park's design was completed, and in January 2000, 17 additional caissons had to be added to the partially built garage to support the weight of Gehry's pavilion. In April the tops of all these caissons had to be rebuilt for changes in the pavilion's foundation.

U.S. Equities Realty was responsible for negotiating contracts with Gehry and all contractors. Walsh Construction and its subcontractors were hired to execute three elements of Gehry's design: the structural steel supporting the stainless steel ribbons, the ribbons themselves and the trellis and associated sound system.

The LeJeune Steel Company of Minneapolis was the subcontractor for the structural steel. The pavilion's concrete walls frame the orchestra shell space, which is 100 feet (30 m) wide, 50 feet (15 m) tall and has no support columns. The pavilion's roof rests on a dozen north–south trusses supported by east–west truss girders. The south side of the orchestra shell space is enclosed by the glass doors of the proscenium, which are about 50 feet (15 m) tall, 100 feet (30 m) wide and function like aircraft hangar doors made of glass. They were the largest doors that Glass Solutions of Elmhurst, Illinois, ever produced; the thickness of the glass was a design problem for the steel supports.

Zahner of Kansas City, Missouri, was the subcontractor for the pavilion's ribbons, described as "stainless steel panels that appear to be peeling back from the central opening". The proscenium's metal ribbons are composed of 697 panels that range from 6 to 300 square feet (0.56–27.87 m2) and 1,600 to 20,000 pounds (730–9,070 kg) with a thickness of about 14 inches (36 cm). They are made from aluminum with a stainless steel outer layer that has a uniform shade across all panels. The structural steel for the ribbons had an abnormally low fit tolerance of 0.125 inches (3.2 mm), rather than the standard 1 to 2 inches (25 to 51 mm). The proscenium was inspired by Gehry's 2001 flagship store for Issey Miyake in New York City, which has sculptured titanium that represents pleating. During construction, about five cranes and 18 aerial lifts were on site. The apex of the center element is approximately 150 feet (46 m) high, which was near the limits of basic construction equipment at the time.

Acme Structural of Springfield, Missouri, was the subcontractor for the trellis over the Great Lawn, which resulted from the distributed sound system's requirement for speakers every 70 feet (21 m). One way to achieve this would have involved placing the speakers on pipes or columns, but the resulting forest of columns seemed discordant with the architecture. Gehry preferred the trellis although it cost about $3 million more than speakers arranged on posts would have. The trellis uses 22 criss-crossing arches in a lattice pattern, and is noted for its parabolic grid. The arches use pipes varying in diameter from 12–20 inches (30–51 cm) depending upon the load requirements. Arches longer than 300 feet (91 m) have four or five different radii, where radius describes the extent of pipe curvature. The arch pipes connect to the structural steel of the pavilion structure without linking to the metal ribbons. The trellis is 600 by 300 feet (183 by 91 m).

The pavilion's construction was aided by the French CATIA software program and internet conferencing. Early plans to incorporate a surrounding waterfall and stairway were abandoned. In the end, budget limitations led to compromises with the original architectural plan that left many elements in their most straightforward form, such as exposed pipes and conduits, or rough concrete.

The Talaske Group of Oak Park, Illinois, was the subcontractor for Jay Pritzker Pavilion's LARES sound system, which "generates the reflected and reverberant energy that surrounds and envelops the listener in an indoor performance venue". The system, which effectively produces an even quality of sound throughout the entire venue, has received critical acclaim for its technological adaptations, such as signal processing in a variety of indoor and outdoor venues. The Pritzker Pavilion is the first permanent outdoor installation of the LARES system in the United States. The trellis has both acoustic and architectural functions; it allows for the precise placement of speakers for sound optimization without visual obstructions, while simultaneously providing a unifying visual canopy.

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