The faculty summit is a second two-story atrium stacked on top of the first-floor atrium. It’s a 9,000-square-foot place for professors to collide and collaborate. Surrounding this piazza are six glass-walled seminar rooms located on two stories, each seating 20 to 60 people. “We think of it as a neighborhood where faculty can talk to each other rather than a rectangular room with a coffee pot in the corner,” says Marianne McKenna, a founder partner of KPMB Architects. The faculty reside on the third, fourth and fifth floors of the building.

The White Auditorium, named after former Abbott Laboratories CEO Miles White, a Stanford MBA, is the major convening space in the Global Hub, able to accommodate up to 300 guests in a variety of formats, from seated dinners and receptions to conferences and panel discussions. A special feature of the room, with views of the Chicago skyline and Lake Michigan, is a motorized pullout wall with 216 upholstered seats at the far end of the auditorium.

From one of many outside terraces, there are picture-postcard views of Lake Michigan, the lagoon nestled on the campus and the Chicago skyline. The architects combined wood with the steel and glass to create a warmer feel, an idea borrowed from Pixar headquarters in California.

The building’s many curves reflect the shoreline of Lake Michigan and how the waves touch the rock and sand, says Bruce Kuwabara, a founding partner of KPMB Architects. He quoted classical pianist Glenn Gould at the opening ceremony for the building: “The purpose of art is not the momentary release of adrenaline but the slow construction of a state of wonder.”

Kellogg Dean Sally Blount says the $250 million Global Hub came in on time and under budget.