Architecture for the Ear

At the heart of Chicago's Fort Dearborn project, a 150-acre slum-clearance development on the main northern approach to the Loop, city planners decided to build a memorial to Atomic Physicist Enrico Fermi, who achieved the first controlled nuclear chain reaction, on a squash court under the stands of the University of Chicago's Stagg Field. When an international architectural competition was launched, 355 entrants from 25 countries submitted their designs. Last week the jury awarded first prize and $5,000 to Architect Reginald Caywood Knight, 35, of M.I.T.'s department of architecture.

The new Institutional Center will have a group of office buildings built on two levels focusing on a spacious central plaza. The problem was to build the memorial in the plaza, yet keep the area free and uncluttered. Knight's solution: to build his memorial pavilion between the two levels so that its roof becomes part of the plaza. Inside the glass-walled pavilion is an auditorium in the round. Jutting through the roof of the building into the plaza will be three arrangements of tubular, gold-colored carillons that will soar 80 feet into the air and gently chime throughout the center. "Architecture," said Knight, "will be able to reach out and touch the lives of many more people than would be possible through vision alone."

The memorial will be constructed of white translucent marble, so that when the pavilion is lighted inside at night the floor of the plaza will glow in the dark. The jury, including such topflight architects as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Gordon Bunshaft, Josee Luis Sert and Pier Luigi Nervi, was enthusiastic about Knight's design. Said Mies: "It is a noble project and will be a noble memorial."

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