Kellogg School of Management Start ‘Idea Stimulating’ Build: MBA News

Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management has announced its plans this week to begin construction on its 410,000 square feet new building in early 2014, to be completed late 2016. The new building will become the home of Kellogg’s full-time MBA program along with the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Economics. To be located on the Evanston lakefront campus of Northwestern University, the building aims to be a state-of-the-art global hub of business innovation that will redesign management education.

The building has been designed by Canadian company KPMB Architects, who won the momentous job after competing in a six-month long competition. Founding partner of the company, Bruce Kuwabara addressed the future of business innovation; “You don’t want to be just another business school. You want to breach the paradigm, and that’s what Kellogg has done.” 

As part of Kellogg’s seven year plan for transformation, the new building will be five stories high and hold unique, contemporary classrooms, seminar rooms and gathering spaces. The design of the lecture-style classrooms is reconfigurable to better suit larger seminars and offices can work as study rooms. An impressive 6,600 square foot conservatory spanning two floors will look out over the lakefront and will be used to host business leaders for dinners, speeches and presentations.

Kellogg School of Management heading business innovation through design

The announcement of construction dates coincided with the launch of the project ‘Transforming Together’, a US$350 million campaign to reinvent the school, which is already halfway towards its goal due in part to the donation of James R Russell’s US$17 million estate, given to the school after his death in 2011. Russell was a Kellogg graduate and chief financial officer of Illinois Tool Works and the sum is the largest amount Kellogg School of Management has ever received from a sole donor.

Gorgon Segal (’60), chair of the educational properties committee for Northwestern University’s Board of Trustees and founder of Crate & Barrel, a successful homeware chain, had a significant part in the design process. “In the next five to eight years, we’re going to have a different feel to this university,” said Segal, “In the end, we’ve created a new Kellogg. It will be unique and different and wonderful.”

Image credit: Rendering by KPMB Architects