“ The UIC Visual and Performing Arts Center will be an architecturally
significant building on Chicago’s near West Side that serves as a
gateway and bridge between UIC and the world, and as a destination
for innovative arts and cultural production that performs and promotes
UIC’s mission, ‘to create knowledge that transforms our views of
the world and, through sharing and application, transforms the world.’
As the new public face of UIC’s East Campus, and the College, this
sustainable, mixed-use space will transform life for the community
and for students on campus, fostering meaningful exchanges
by serving as a hub for public performance, research and scholarship,
teaching, and gathering. This place of artistic innovation and production
will promote interchange and experimental collaborations
between the arts and other disciplines such as health sciences,
engineering, and urban planning, as well as provide a research site
for experimenting with the most cutting edge architectural and
design practices.
This space will realize the vision of the College of Architecture,
Design, and the Arts to become the nation’s premiere college for
education in the arts, design, and architecture. The UIC Visual
and Performing Arts Center will be a dynamic center— at the intersection
of thinking and making—where new ideas are explored
and manifest, and where each stage of the process of creative production
is shared with the broader world.”
Excerpted from CADA Directors’ Vision Statement, January, 2014
“ On a fundamental level, the proposed Visual and Performing Arts
Center will provide high quality educational spaces for students
in programs that are currently constrained by their existing, sub-par
facilities; this should also catalyze growth for those programs.
At the same time, the proposed center is an opportunity to develop
new audiences both within and outside of the University.”

Excerpted from the VPAC Request for Qualification, August, 2015