Millennium Park Bike Station Design: Muller&Muller's Glass Atrium

Most of Millennium Park’s architecture stands above ground. The bike station’s best work is below it. Muller&Muller designed a two-level bicycle garage under the park’s north end and gave it one visible feature, a glass atrium, to carry the building’s identity above ground. The history of the station covers who built it and why; the Station hub holds the rest of the archive. This page covers how it was built.

A garage below a park

Most of Millennium Park is built above street level on a parking garage that covers the Illinois Central railway lines.² The bicycle station sits below grade on levels five and six of that garage, with a 1,000-square-foot glass atrium at park level.²

That arrangement set the design. Cyclists brought their bikes into the building and negotiated a winding ramp down to the parking area. A staircase led down to the other areas.² Low ceilings forced vertical chaseways for the mechanical systems.² Keeping the interior open and full of light was a real challenge underground.²

The city’s fact sheet lists the finished size as 16,450 square feet plus exterior plazas.¹ The glass supplier’s case study gives 16,448 square feet for the heated building.²

The atrium

The atrium is the building’s focal point. It introduces the two lower levels and gives the facility a presence above ground.³ Project designer David Steele described the purpose in plain terms: “to give it an identifiable presence above ground and bring light down into the space below.”²

Its sloping roof carries 120 black laminate solar panels. They generate 6.5 percent of the electricity the facility needs.² The panels and other reflective surfaces let dappled light through and shade the space, which keeps the structure cooler on sunny days.²

Fire-rated glass on the stair

The city wanted the open staircase enclosed for safety. Steele wanted the light to keep flowing. The answer was Pilkington Pyrostop, a fire and impact safety rated glass wall in fire-rated frames.² Local code would have allowed wire glass. Steele chose a product with a heat rating that also let the team install the largest panes available with minimal framing, so people could see their destination.²

Materials and racks

The interior uses stainless steel and blond wood, with awnings for shade.³ The parking system used two-tiered DoubleParker racks, which hold more than twice as many bicycles per square foot as traditional racks. Josta, a German manufacturer of bicycle parking systems, made them.³

Schedule and team

The city’s fact sheet dates the project: design began in August 2003, the building was completed in June 2004 and it was dedicated in July 2004.¹ The schedule was tight. The design process started in late August, bid drawings were ready in mid-December and construction began the following March.² Muller&Muller won a $120,000 contract to design the station by Memorial Day 2004.³

Role	Firm or person
Architect	Muller&Muller, Ltd.1
Project manager	Jay Muller, AIA1
Project designer	David Steele, AIA1
Project management	Chicago Department of Transportation1
Construction management	URS Chicago1
Structural engineer	Ruben J. Baer Associates1
Mechanical and electrical engineer	Calor Design Group1
Contractor	FHP Tectonics (Paschen)1

Architect Cindy Muller said in the Chicago Women in Architecture archive that without the WBE initiative the firm might never have gotten its public-sector work, and that “it’s very possible that we wouldn’t have ended up with the Millennium Park Bike Station.”⁴ The archive lists the project as completed in 2004.⁴

Reaching the station

Cyclists came and went by walking their bikes up and over the 940-foot BP Bridge, designed by Frank Gehry. Riding on it was not allowed.² The bridge slopes less than five percent, a grade that satisfies the Americans with Disabilities Act.² It begins at Daley Bicentennial Plaza and slopes over Columbus Drive to meet Millennium Park just south of the station.²

What critics said

Blair Kamin, the Chicago Tribune’s architecture critic, gave the Cycle Center three stars out of a possible four and called it a “gem” for the city.³ The Toronto Star described a “jewel-like glass building.”³ Kamin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, praised the atrium more than once.³

The planner behind it

By 2006 the station’s own site carried a page from the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation, dated 2003, on facility design and implementation. It listed the Millennium Park Bicycle Parking Station among the federation’s projects for the City’s bicycle parking program, which it dated from 1999.⁵ In 2003 the federation had been hired to research existing conditions and to help prepare the Request for Proposal for the facility’s operator.⁵ The 2006 page also said the federation had designed more than 70 miles of Chicago bike lanes since 1999 and that its project manager managed a four-person team of field technicians and drafting engineers.⁵

The building today

The station closed to the public on September 30, 2022.⁶ The Chicago Police Department Bicycle Patrol, which had held space on the lower level, now occupies the building.⁶ The building stands; the commuter station does not. For the same job now, see bike parking downtown and the Divvy stations near Millennium Park.