The University of Cincinnati will become prosperous with the opening of the Richard E. Lindner Athletics Center, its center of UC’s Varsity Village and the new base for all Department of Athletic facilities. The 236,000 square foot building is located between Nippert Stadium and Fifth Third Arena, one of the ambitious developments of UC’s athletics facilities since 2003. Why it’s called “village” because it was adopted because the concept provides ease of use and access to support services of UC’s intercollegiate program, similar to that of a small town.

The facilities named in honor to Cincinnati philanthropist and businessman Richard E. Lindner, who gave the supporting fund for the project. Designed by internationally acclaimed architect Bernard Tschumi, the Athletic Center is formed gigantic, eight-story (three below ground and five above) boomerang nestled between the football stadium and basketball arena, one which will push the university into a new era of integration between athletics and academics. To the north leads toward the Campus Recreation Center, by Thom Mayne of Morphosis, and to the south connects to an open plaza, practice field and tennis courts.

He works with Kim Starr, senior architect of Bernard Tschumi Architects; Mark Thurnauer, senior architect of glaserworks; Barrett Bamberger, UC project manager; and Ron Kull, university architect. UC graduate Eva Maddox (DAAP ‘66) enriched the museum design. Bernard Tschumi is renowned for his unprecedented solutions to problematic of creating spaces that serve public and private needs. This is reached with a dynamic and visually exciting architectural execution.

The Athletic Center can be explained as freestanding infill or a contextual free-form. Its unusual link pin shape has been designed to take advantage of its existing tight site, resulting in dynamic remnant spaces the proposed curvilinear building, the existing stadium and Shoemaker Arena as well as sports fields and the new Recreation Center. It also shows an interesting view to and from the stadium.

For the first time in UC history, the Center will concentrate all athletics facilities in a single core, bringing organization and fusion to the university’s intercollegiate administration, training, coaching, competition and academic services. In keeping with Tschumi’s architectural philosophy, the building has no true facade, catchy front or back or dominating entrance, but rather a visually strong exterior that engage attention from every viewpoints. Huge triangles of pre-cast concrete, pierced by similarly shaped triangular windows, are knitted together to form the sweeping curves of the building’s exterior.

Bernard Tschumi got the idea when he was while sitting in the press box of the old baseball field on campus to choose the placement of the Athletics Center, as a ‘squeeze play’ into the compressed space between the university’s Fifth Third Arena and Nippert Stadium. “In our first meeting, the UC athletics department said to me, ‘you can site the building anywhere you want to. You can reshuffle everything as long as you put everything back with space for all our needs…then, one day, I was sitting in the baseball press box, and I looked over and saw the squeeze space between the stadium and Fifth Third Arena. No one had looked at that space yet. It was a lost piece of ground,” said Tschumi.

He was quickly attracted to this unused alley of space because he wanted the new athletics center to have a strong connection to campus life. “Athletics and academics are part of the same university family, this space was a natural linchpin, a pivot. That’s why I wanted it even while it demanded we design a building of unusual shape.” Also the other reason is there were too many utilities located under the east side of Fifth Third Arena. By placing the new Lindner Center on the arena’s west side, the designers could incorporate two existing floor levels, below ground, into the new structure.

The character of the building sources not only from the diagonal movement inherent in the exposed trusses but the vertical and horizontal movement the building will encourage among users. For instance, Tschumi deliberately draws the eyes upward by means of a five-story atrium at the center’s main entrance. “It’s a deep building, not unlike a cathedral. Because of its depth and size, I wanted to bring light down into the structure while also drawing the eye upward. That’s achieved by the skylight that caps the atrium.”

The construction of the Lindner Athletic Center has been a challenge also a joy for glaserwork’s Thurnauer. “This is a truly unique project. There has been no book to follow in building it, and it’s been a privilege to be a part of it. You know, a few years back, I almost moved to Chicago because I figured it would be the only way I could work on the magnitude of projects that would really prove a challenge. But Cincinnati and UC have really made so much possible for designers and architects.” Heapy Engineering designed the PHE systems for the Lindner Athletic Center and a new baseball stadium.

The building extrudes its plaza on V-shaped supports that uncover the inviting ground floor and glass doors at the north and south ends. The Lindner Athletics Center is more than just athletics, by offering centralized administrative and coaching offices that looked out on onto the football field as one of the examples of Tschumi’s merging of spaces. Also there are team meeting rooms, study halls, a sports medicine and hydrotherapy suite, locker rooms and a practice gymnasium. Open to the full university is a 335-seat auditorium, a two-level faculty club with restaurant, a University health service suite, and the centralized ticketing office.

The lobby is an open, light-filled five-story atrium that unifies and gathers the athletes, coaches and administrators as they move from one activity to another within the building. It connects between north and south street, serves the general student population who use the long atrium as an inviting passageway connecting them to the other side of campus. New landscaping around the Lindner Athletics Center, and to the east of Nippert Stadium, has occurred. A major walkway, O’Varsity Way, leads visitors to the new building. The statue of UC basketball great Oscar Robertson has been moved to the Victory Plaza at the end of the walkway. The Raymond D. Sheakley Lawn, adjacent to Victory Plaza, provides a gathering and activities place for UC students.

The ground floor will comprise the George and Helen Smith Museum showing the history of the university and the UC athletics program. Sports histories will be exhibitioned in graphic murals and on video screens, designed by Eva Maddox, which presents via photographs, timelines and film the history of UC sports. Terminals in the Jack Twyman Traditions Lounge will allow former student-athletes and their families look up photos and records of their participation. A five-story tall trophy case houses the Bearcats championship memorabilia.

Floating red staircase, glass elevators and views of the floors above dominate the core of the atrium. The wide vertical stairway serves on a straight north-south line from its underground source on the center’s north side to where it rises upward and comes to rest on the eighth floor on the building’s south side. Rose by horizontal supports at each landing the stairway seems to glide, to be pulled upward. This unique method can be quite disturbing, especially if one looks upward and sees the graphic elements showing several stories.

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