Higher Education Buildings Report: The top BD+C articles on university and college facilities
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 Designing and building for the class of 2020The ways in which students learn, work, and interact are changing at a such a rapid pace that future higher education facilities will require radical rethinking during the next decade. Now's the time to start planning for the Class of 2020. Read the report  Living in a green laboratoryAt Duke and Stanford, student residence halls are starting to function more like live-in laboratories, where students can research, develop, and test new ways to live green. Read the report Gothic architecture is so ingrained in Princeton University’s heritage that the architects and engineers of New York A/E firm Einhorn Yaffee Prescott made no significant changes to the exterior of the institution’s Holder, Hamilton, Madison, and Holder Memorial Tower halls during an extensive four-year, $65 million, 170,000-sf renovation. But that didn’t make the project facing EYP any less daunting. Read the report
As the college recruiting wars continue to heat up, institutions are looking to outdo the competition with bigger, badder facilities. The latest carrot on the recruiting stick is lavish, state-of-the-art recreation centers that look and function more like private health and wellness clubs than the smelly, dank PE complexes of yesteryear. Read the report
Englewood neighborhood By locating its new campus in the heart of Chicago's impoverished Englewood neighborhood, Kennedy-King College hopes to kick-start development in the area and provide educational opportunities that lead to good jobs and careers for local residents. Read the report
Yale University Sculpture Building Although Yale University's bottom-line mandate to Building Teams is simply to achieve LEED certification for all new buildings, the true directive is to shoot for at least LEED Silver. Thus far, the Chemistry Research Building has hit the Silver mark, and Malone Center, at LEED Gold, has exceeded it. Add to that list the new 55,000-sf Sculpture Building, designed by KieranTimberlake Associates, Philadelphia, with BVH Integrated Services of Bloomington, Conn., as MEP engineer and the New York office of atelier ten as environmental designer. Read the report
Covered in tricolor felt, trimmed in walnut, and standing on black steel legs, a dynamic, 100-foot-long wall at New York University's Office of Strategic Assessment, Planning, and Design helps define public and private space within the 10,000-sf office. Read the report
In a climate where the temperature regularly hits 90°F, it would seem prudent for a university to discourage students from leaving the exterior doors and windows to their dorm rooms wide open. But for many of the 318 students living at Pitzer College's new LEED Gold student housing complex in Claremont, Calif., an open-door policy is a way of life. And that's just what Jim Marchant was hoping for when his college set forth to build the 69,000-sf, three-building eco-dorm complex. Read the report Loyola University Chicago's new glass-clad digital library demonstrates that passive climate control using natural ventilation can be achieved, even in harsh environments like the Windy City's. Read the report Education facilities, both K-12 schools and college and university buildings, are among the most active sectors in green building. This webcast will provide an overview and case studies of how school districts and institutions of higher learning are greening their buildings and campuses. Read the report Twelve years ago, Philadelphia's Drexel University was plagued with declining student enrollment, an empty checkbook, and a physical plant that was literally falling apart. Today, the institution's financial footing is solid, as is its strategy for intellectual growth and physical expansion. The story of Drexel's renaissance provides valuable lessons to those concerned about the future of America's 4,000-plus colleges and universities. Read the report
Yale University's new $52.6 million sculpture building and gallery has been described by its architect, Stephen Kieran, as a “very simple” building. But Kieran, a partner at Philadelphia-based KieranTimberlake Associates, had to navigate the complexities of designing a virtually transparent building without compromising energy efficiency. Read the report
A century ago, majestic Victorian homes lined Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, but few of these grande dames still survive. Harvard Law School owned three such beauties, which they used for office and research space. Unfortunately, the houses occupied prime real estate on which the school planned to build a new academic center. Rather than raze the historic wood-frame homes, the law school made it a priority to repurpose them. Read the report
At a time when institutions of higher learning are spending tens of millions of dollars erecting massive, cutting-edge recreation and fitness centers, Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., decided to take a more modest, historical approach. Instead of building an ultra-grand new facility, the university chose to breathe new life into its landmark Alumni Gymnasium by transforming the outdated 99-year-old facility into a state-of-the-art fitness and recreation center. Read the report
Rouss Hall, a historic 24,000-sf building designed by Stanford White, served as the home of the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce from 1955 to 1975. Thirty years later, the university unveiled plans to have the business school return to the small, outdated 110-year-old facility, but this time with the addition of a 132,000-sf companion building to be named Robertson Hall. Read the report
Since its founding in 1794, when what is now the state of Maine was still part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Bowdoin College has played a pivotal role in the educational and cultural life of Maine. Contributing to that role for more than a century has been the Walker Art Building, an 1894 McKim, Mead & White-designed structure and home to the college’s Museum of Art. Read the report
Three simple brick patterns imbue Cornell University's Africana Studies and Research Center with a striking new identity despite a budget with little room for architectural extravagance. Read the report
As the home to Harvard's Hasty Pudding Theatricals—the oldest theatrical company in the nation—12 Holyoke Street had its share of opening nights. In April 2002, however, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences decided the 1888 Georgian Revival building no longer met the needs of the company and hired Boston-based architect Leers Weinzapfel Associates to design a more contemporary facility. Read the report
The award-winning Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University is attracting scientists at a furious pace. Will Tempe be the U.S.'s next great biotech center? Read the report
When students, faculty, and staff moved into seven brand new buildings clustered around a quad in February 1931, the San Diego State Teachers College stood alone on this mesa east of downtown San Diego. Flash forward 75 years and several name changes—the school officially became San Diego State University in the early 1970s—and the 33,000-student institution is landlocked, surrounded by private development on three sides and a hill on the other. Read the report
Michigan State University's newest building looks like every other academic facility on the East Lansing campus, but it serves a very different purpose. Can you guess what it is? Read the report
Canada's largest geothermal system (and the second largest in North America) sits inconspicuously beneath a beautifully landscaped, 80,730-sf quad at the center of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, in Oshawa. Founded in 2002, UOIT is Canada's newest university, and its 42-acre campus and academic village are being hailed as a model of sustainability, with the massive, 2,000-ton BTESS (Borehole Thermal Energy Storage System) heating and cooling system at its center. Read the report
Metal cladding interfered with communications at UC San Diego's advanced technology research facility, so the Building Team found a substitute that was visually high-tech but remained invisible to transmission signals. Read the report
The University of California's 10th campus is nestled deep in the San Joaquin Valley, 40 miles south of Modesto, just outside the city of Merced (population 63,893 in 2000). Amid arid farmlands wedged between the peaks of the surrounding Sierra Mountains, the first new UC campus in 40 years—and the first campus in the entire country to aspire to LEED Silver certification from the U.S. Green Building Council—is taking shape. Read the report
For George Boggs, defending the merits of a community college education is a routine part of his job as president and CEO of the American Association of Community Colleges. Just last month, he had to set the record straight for a 17-year-old high school student who told the Washington Post she felt "doomed" to attend a community college. Read the report
Arthur A. Spruch, PE, is SVP and director of higher education services at S E A Consultants Inc., Cambridge, Mass., with 35 years' experience in the planning, design, and construction of large urban infrastructure projects. He has pioneered an innovative system for managing the operational, design, and sustainable aspects of institutional service systems, which S E A has implemented at such institutions as Brown, Columbia, Harvard, MIT, Penn, Stanford, UMass Amherst, and Yale. Read the report
The hope was that a complete restoration and modernization would bring life back to three neoclassic beauties that formerly served as Phoenix Union High School—but time had not treated them kindly. Read the report
From its humble beginnings as a tiny pharmaceutical college founded by 14 Boston pharmacists, the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences has grown to become the largest school of its kind in the U.S. For more than 175 years, MCPHS operated solely in Boston, on a quaint, 2,500-student campus in the heart of the city's famed Longwood Medical and Academic Area. By the late 1990s, however, the campus was bursting at the seams as the demand for pharmacy and health sciences professionals skyrocketed. Read the report
When tasked with transforming an early 1920s Italian Renaissance bank building into a fully functional library for the Rhode Island School of Design, the Building Team for RISD's Fleet Library found itself at odds with the project's two main goals. Read the report
Everyone in the room must have had a hearty chuckle when Erik Kocher first presented his idea for adapting the old swimming and diving venue of 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. Kocher's scheme: Suspend a new floor between the pool level and the 120-foot-high ceiling and turn the facility into a full-service recreation center for Georgia Institute of Technology, with basketball courts, a running track, and more. Read the report
Most students entering the four-story atrium of the Lillis Business Complex at University of Oregon in Eugene probably don't realize that the checkered glass wall that floods the space with daylight also helps to power the building. The south-facing entryway is clad with one of the largest solar glass curtain walls in the Northwest. More than 2,200 6×8-inch solar arrays are sandwiched between two panes of glass to collect solar energy while also shading the atrium space. Read the report
With its bent edifices, pop-eyed windows, and mangled mix of metallic shapes and appendages, Frank Gehry's surrealistic and thought-provoking design of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Computer, Information, and Intelligence Sciences is part Dr. Seuss, part hurricane aftermath. Read the report |
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