Ignatius House

Campus infil that makes landscape central

  • Type Institutional,
  • Location Omaha, Nebraska
  • Area 50,450 s.f.
  • Status Concept
  • Date 2020

The new Ignatius House will house 28 Jesuit priests, brothers, and their guests at the historic heart of the Creighton University campus. Replacing a substandard existing building, Ignatius House forms the west and northwest edges of Jesuit Gardens, one of the most attractive quadrangles on the dense urban campus. Adjacent is Creighton Hall, the first campus building constructed in 1877 shortly before the university was founded as Creighton College on September 2, 1878. To the west of the Gardens is the 1885 Observatory and south Ignatius House is St. John’s Catholic Church.

Ignatius House serves the Jesuit Community with individual studio apartments, offices, a dining hall with kitchen, a living room/reception room, a t.v. and game room, a library, a recreational kitchen and private dining spaces, an exercise room, and other services. A chapel occupies the west wing. These spaces are organized across 3 floors plus limited parking occupying a small sub basement. Taking advantage of the steep slope to the west, the common areas are on the 3rd floor, a piano nobile, with access directly to Jesuit Gardens.

 

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View from Jesuit Gardens, southeast

View from above (south) and campus diagram

Site Strategy

The new building forms the west and northwest edges of Jesuit Gardens, enhancing the existing landscape and providing more structure. The new garden path forms a square cloister bounded by Creighton Hall to the south, the Observatory to the north east, and the logia of Ignatius House west and northwest. Open sides of the gardens spill into adjacent wooded slopes well above adjacent streets.

A campus building that both forms and reacts to its context

The new Ignatius House is defined by two organizing forces: the individual domicile cells that form a 16’ spatial and structural grid, and the trees and site boundaries that form the undulating exterior envelope. Referencing historic Jesuit architecture and deferring to the adjacent brick buildings, an arcade wraps the gently curving building envelope to form the ege of a new cloister. This is actually the 3rd level of the 4-story building and it serves as a loggia connecting the raised garden to interior common gathering spaces including a reception hall, dining hall. Offices and meeting rooms line the loggia on the north side. The loggia is a space that merges the public area of the garden with the private realm of the Jesuit Community inside.

Situated on the west side of the building on an axis with the main entrance and Jesuit Gardens, the Chapel is the center of spiritual life for the Creighton Jesuit community. The circular shape invokes wholeness and community, while presenting a subtle reference to the Santuario de Loiola in Spain but with a rustic simplicity befitting the service-orientation of the order.

Dining Room

View from Jesuit Gardens, northeast
Floor Plans: sub-basement parking, basement, garden floor, second floor residences

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