Santa Ana, Calif.-headquartered SVA Architects and global design, architecture, engineering and planning firm HOK designed the 153,000-square-foot events center and arena, which will seat 5,050 people with room to expand to more than 6,500. CBU selected Tempe, Ariz.-headquartered Sundt Construction Inc. as the general contractor for the $73 million project, which will create the 66-year-old university’s largest gathering space to accommodate a surge in growth in recent years.

“Not only will this facility create additional event space for the university’s fast-growing student body, but it will support all facets of their athletic, academic and spiritual life program,” said Sundt Vice President Robert Stokes in a statement.

The two-story, multi-use facility will be a hub for CBU athletic events, commencement exercises and orientation activities, along with the university’s chapel program, which serves more than 5,000 students a week. The structure will also feature locker rooms for home and visiting teams as well as a new athletics suite and offices.

The facility is expected to be complete in April 2017, in time for CBU commencement ceremonies in May.

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HOK, with offices in St. Louis, in association with Madison, Wis.-based architectural firm Potter Lawson designed the 176,500-square-foot building, while Neenah, Wis.-headquartered Miron Construction Co. will serve as the general contractor.

The four-story academic and research facility will provide space for the chemistry department, which will be relocated from its existing facility, built in 1963. It also creates new space for four UWSP biology department learning clusters, which will be relocated from the school’s Natural Resources Building. Those clusters include introductory biology, human biology and botany as well as microbiology, and molecular and cellular biology. The facility will feature classrooms, lecture halls, research and teaching labs, faculty and staff offices, and a tropical conservatory. It will be the first major, freestanding academic facility built on the UW-Stevens Point campus since 1971.

“The project supports the university’s ongoing mission to prepare students for professional careers while encouraging community outreach and ecological stewardship,” said Joseph Ostafi, IV, AIA, LEED AP, Science + Technology practice leader for HOK in St. Louis. “UWSP’s student-centered education focuses on development of critical thinking, creativity and inspiring life-long learning.”

To support UWSP’s emphasis on research for undergraduate students, the design purposefully places research, instructional and prep spaces adjacent to one another, added Ostafi. This provides greater efficiency for the users and enables equipment sharing. A majority of the instructional labs, classrooms and many of the research labs are standardized in size so they can easily adapt to current and futures needs.

Teaching spaces will also be clearly visible to students and campus visitors. The design puts science on display throughout the building with electronic kiosks and high visibility into biology labs and the tropical conservatory, which will be open to all students and visitors. The tropical conservatory not only serves as a teaching environment but also an architectural focal point, becoming a campus lantern element after dark. It highlights UWSP’s robust botany teaching and research program.

In support of the university’s vision of environmental stewardship, the building includes numerous sustainability strategies and targets LEED Gold certification. Large windows optimize daylighting, while mechanical and electrical systems are highly efficient, according to Ostafi. The facility is projected to use 40 percent less energy and 26 percent less water compared to a conventional design. In addition to the conservatory, green space around the building includes bioswales and rain gardens. The third floor has an outdoor patio with a rooftop garden and space for casual gatherings.

“One of the major challenges when planning the building was considering all the complex critical adjacencies,” Ostafi said. “The HOK team took into account several criteria: ensuring research spaces are convenient to their support spaces, placing complementary departments and/or uses near one another; and providing adequate distance between other functions that need to be remote to one another.”

The site also provided opportunities for innovative solutions due to the location having significant pedestrian and vehicular approaches on all sides. Locating service elements such as the loading dock area required additional design consideration, including additional landscape design elements to help screen these services from the public eye.

Storage and movement of hazardous chemicals as well as other sensitive materials and equipment needed to be carefully considered. A separate path was created for back-of-facility movements to mitigate interaction with the main circulation routes. The service elevator is placed away from the central stair to help with this separation.

Locating the building as a ceremonial campus arrival point emphasizes the importance of the sciences at UWSP. This design offered a major opportunity to create a building organization that promotes cross-pollination and collaboration between multiple science disciplines. The mix of chemistry and biology in one building is somewhat unusual. The design needed to accommodate all building users as well as invite non-majors to learn more about the chemistry and biology departments.
 

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Tyler Patrick, AICP, is a principal with Watertown, Mass.-based Sasaki Associates Inc., which works primarily with higher education clients planning both facilities and detailed campus master plans. Nate Appleman AIA, LEED AP, is director of Sports + Recreation + Entertainment for the Kansas City office of HOK, which offers both architectural and planning services as well.

Q. What technology or modeling programs have been most useful to your firm in crafting master plans?

Patrick: We actually have an in-house team of programmers, Sasaki Strategies. They help us to create tools. We don’t necessarily develop generic tools for every institution; we’re more interested in developing custom tools to explore certain issues. What we’re trying to do is provide access to a visualization of data, in some cases where data doesn’t exist, to develop tools where we can create data. That means sometimes we’re creating interactive mapping surveys. We have a survey tool called My Campus that we use in order to understand how people use the campus. By making it map-based we can really understand use patterns.

Appleman: Three-dimensional modeling is important to communicating intent with clients who aren’t used to looking at architectural plans. These programs allow them to understand a project’s scope, program and size very effectively. At times, we create low-tech, physical models to look at specific planning issues and building placement so we can truly see and appreciate the building’s form and location on a site in relationship to other buildings on campus.

Q. What methods have you employed to develop a plan that met a school’s needs while also adhering to a tight budget?

Patrick: Increasingly what we’re seeing is an emphasis on renovation and strategic reuse of facilities rather than building new. Part of the problem is an increasing deferred maintenance backlog that colleges and universities are facing. If they can renovate to improve the quality of a space and reduce that deferred maintenance backlog that is key. We look at a building and ask, ‘What is it best suited for?’ It may have been created as a lab building or library, but isn’t meeting those needs anymore. So, can it be repurposed as an administrative office building? Can it be better used as a classroom building? We’re always looking for high value solutions for the client so that they can best use their existing resources.

Appleman: What’s important to remember is that “improve” does not always mean “new.” With every master plan we do, we always challenge our clients to think about assets they currently have and help evaluate how viable those assets are long-term. This begins a critical discussion about building new vs. renovating or expanding existing facilities. It’s a case-by-case basis, but often adhering to a tight budget means converting existing assets to serve a new purpose that meets the needs and budget of the department and university.

Q. How will environmental sustainability continue to impact master planning on both the K-12 and university levels?

Patrick: Sustainability is ingrained in everything we do. We don’t think of it just in terms of environmental sustainability, but financial, social and environmental sustainability as well. We try to look at all those factors together to bring a balanced approach and solution. We’re looking at decisions around transportation impact demand for parking and what that means in terms of single occupancy vehicle trips. We’re thinking about the impact of impervious areas on campus, about giving back to the community and the role that universities and colleges play as community stewards. I think that the master plan at the broadest sense has to embrace all of those things, so that as individual initiatives are developed there’s a framework to support that sustainable lens through which things should be looked at.

Appleman: Sustainability will continue to be a key priority for master plans on college campuses and will continue to evolve. This is particularly true for sports facilities, which are often anchors for a campus community. Just a few years ago, universities and municipalities asked about how to reduce water use, minimize waste, save energy and reduce costs. Looking to the future, next-generation campus facilities must now go a step further to create and produce; enhancing the habitat, generating water, creating resources, harvesting energy and adding lasting project value. Ideally, the collegiate stadiums and recreation centers of the future will generate more energy than they consume, providing surrounding businesses and mixed-use developments with valuable resources from which to draw.

Read more of this Q&A in the March/April issue of School Construction News, available soon.

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Cardiff University will work with the London office of global architecture firm HOK to design the new $110 million Translational Research Facility. The 129,000-square-foot research hub will accommodate two planned institutes: Cardiff Catalysis Institute and the Institute for Compound Semiconductors.

“We are delighted to have been selected by Cardiff University to design this visionary new research facility,” said Adrian Gainer, regional leader of Science + Technology based in HOK’s London office, in a statement. “We look forward to creating cutting-edge facilities that will reinforce the university’s international reputation as a leading catalysis research center and build on its strengths in the development of semiconductor devices and materials.”

Cardiff University has embarked on a comprehensive expansion of its existing campus, according to a statement by HOK. By focusing on innovation, the university hopes to engage with the private sector to generate commercial revenue streams to support significant research programs. By also working in partnership with key stakeholders and investing in facilities and people, the university hopes to become a magnet for enterprise, creativity and innovation. The Translational Research Facility in particular will support multidisciplinary research, turning academic research and innovation into practical, real-world applications delivering benefits for society, healthcare, culture and the economy, according to a statement by the university.

“We are looking forward to working with HOK to deliver the Translational Research Facility, which will act as a crucible for the university’s innovative translational research,” said Professor Hywel Thomas, pro vice-chancellor of research, innovation and engagement at Cardiff University, in a statement. “Innovation is our lifeblood and runs through all we do. Creating the Innovation Campus will help leading researchers and entrepreneurial students turn research into real world answers, bringing social and economic benefits to Wales and beyond.”

As a whole, the new campus will also reinvigorate the former industrial space for which it is planned into a cutting-edge campus. In addition to the Translational Research Facility, the campus will include the Social Science Research Park, which would act as a magnet for national and international research leaders, and increase capacity for research and collaborative learning; the Innovation Center, which will offer start-up companies high-quality, affordable space, advice and support; and the Research Institute for Compound Semiconductor Technology, which would demonstrate and test compound semiconductor technology in realistic environments.
Further plans for the new campus include a practitioners/innovators-in-residence program, high-level training and skills development for postgraduate students and the development of existing enterprise education and opportunities to strengthen the culture of entrepreneurial and innovative thinking among students, according to a statement by the university.

HOK will specifically provide architectural and lead consultant services for the Translational Research Facility. Other project team members include the UK offices of Englewood, Colo.-headquartered CH2M, which is providing mechanical, electrical, structural and civil engineering services; Buro Four of London, which is providing project management services; and cost consultant Faithful and Gould of London. HOK has also been awarded Phase II of the development, which has not yet been defined.
 

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The London office of global design firm HOK was selected as the project’s lead consultant in collaboration with Montreal-headquartered WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff, which has secured the multidisciplinary engineering contract. Ironside Farrar of Edinburgh is the project’s planning consultant.

The new Gilmorehill Campus development is a critical part of the university’s “Inspiring People, Changing the World” strategy and is intended to enhance the university’s position as one of the world’s leading broad-based, research-intensive institutions. In response to the university’s objectives, HOK’s design will encourage cross-sector collaboration through the creation of a flexible environment that promotes interaction and lateral thinking, according to a statement by the firm.

“We are thrilled to have an opportunity to work with the University of Glasgow and our partners on the design of this significant and visionary project,” said Adrian Gainer, regional leader for Science + Technology at HOK, in a statement. “We have extensive experience in delivering highly successful research environments worldwide. We look forward to creating a design that will encourage interdisciplinary collaboration and inspire the university’s research teams to pursue world-changing activities.”

“Partnering with HOK allowed us to bring the most recent innovative expertise in world class research facilities to the project,” said John Cox, senior technical director for building structures, WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff, in a separate statement. “This is a significant win for us as it strengthens our ongoing relationship with the University of Glasgow as well as raising our engineering skills profile in the education sector across Scotland and the UK as a whole.”

The planned research hub is the next in a series of recent construction projects that will improve education and research. In June 2015, the University of Glasgow cut the ribbon on its four-story Teaching and Learning Centre at the South Glasgow University Hospital. The facility supports hands-on training for both undergraduate medical degree students and postgraduate students.

September 2015 saw the opening of the Centre for Virus Research on the university’s Garscube Campus. The building, constructed by Laing O’Rourke headquartered in Dartford, U.K., contains cutting-edge laboratories, offices and social spaces that support research being conducted by both human and veterinary virologists.

In October 2015, the university broke ground on a new Imaging Centre of Excellence, which will provide further clinical research facilities. Construction is expected to end on that project later this year.

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The innovative interdisciplinary research center, designed by the Chicago office of HOK with the building enclosure by James Carpenter Design Associates (JCDA) of New York, is located on the university’s main campus south of downtown Chicago. It includes state-of-the-art laboratories, offices, conference rooms, a 150-seat conference facility and a café. Five floors above grade provide flexibility and infrastructure for a variety of different lab types ranging from optics to chemistry. To isolate highly specialized labs from vibration and electromagnetic interference, two of the center’s seven floors are below grade.

The center also houses the university’s Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, the Institute for Molecular Engineering and the Dean’s Office of Physical Sciences. World-leading research teams working across multiple disciplines in the fields of chemical, electrical, mechanical and biological engineering as well as more traditional materials and physical sciences, now call the state-of-the-art facility home.

“We are proud to contribute to the University of Chicago’s commitment to building on its position as a leader in world-changing research through the development of this new Eckhardt Center,” said Rebecca Nolan, IIDA, LEED AP, managing principal for HOK in Chicago, in a statement. “This is a significant addition to an historic urban campus and to the global scientific community.”

“The diversity of research that takes place here extends from the smallest scale possible to the largest imaginable, ranging from molecular manipulation to increasing our understanding of the universe,” added Bill Odell, FAIA, LEED AP BD+C, director of science and technology for HOK. “This building is a true nexus for transformative, interdisciplinary discovery.”

Carefully planned interaction spaces include a large conference facility, pre- and post-event space, a café, light-filled hallways and corner collaboration areas with open views. Each floor is considered a neighborhood, with a home base at the north end providing the largest gathering spaces. On the building’s top floor, an open balcony provides a view of the Chicago skyline to the north. Physically connecting the building to two adjacent research buildings further supports collaboration, and the main lobby provides a link to a new landscaped quadrangle designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates.

“The University of Chicago scientists and engineers who participated in the design process emphasized to us that, in addition to creating opportunities for formal collaboration, chance interactions and the ability for researchers, faculty and students to have conversations in informal settings are invaluable,” said Mickey Collins, AIA, LEED AP, HOK’s project manager, in a statement. “Our team designed every aspect of the Eckhardt Research Center to foster the type of interdisciplinary collaboration required to generate scientific breakthroughs.”

The highly sustainable facility also serves to help link users to nature and light. For example, the dynamic envelope design is based on revealing light as an expression of nature. Each facade is uniquely responsive to the site, harnessing light as an organizing principle for the building’s performance and human experience. To support the center’s mission to drive the research and development of renewable and environmental resources, sustainability is integrated into the building, which is expected to achieve LEED Silver certification.

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360 Architecture is recognized as a leading designer of stadiums, ballparks, arenas, wellness centers and mixed-use entertainment districts, and has completed multiple educational projects. The firm was the result of a previous merger of CDFM2 Architecture Inc. and Heinlein Schrock Stearns in 2004, and also maintains offices in San Francisco and Columbus, Ohio.

“As a global design leader, it’s important for HOK to offer clients design excellence in sports architecture,” said Patrick MacLeamy, FAIA, HOK chairman and CEO, in a statement. “360 Architecture has created several of the world’s most innovative professional and collegiate sports facilities and their design-focused culture and values align with ours. Together, we will design the next generation of sports and entertainment facilities while serving all types of clients as one of Kansas City’s largest design firms.”

“Joining HOK enables us to take advantage of an exceptionally strong global platform and to expand our sports facility design practice while offering our clients additional expertise in other markets,” added Brad Schrock, AIA, senior principal at 360 Architecture. “This also brings HOK, a global design leader in many building types, into the heart of Kansas City. We expect continued long-term growth.”

360 Architecture has worked with both professional sports franchises and civic organizations across the country over its 10-year history. The firm is currently contributing to the renovation of the Miami Dolphin’s Sun Life Stadium, as well as Rogers Place Arena in Edmonton, Alberta, home of the Edmonton Oilers. It is also completing projects for the San Antonio Spurs and San Jose Earthquakes, among others.

The firm also maintains a firm presence in the higher education sector, and is now involved in the design of Notre Dame University’s Campus Crossroads project in South Bend, Ind., as well as the Beauchamp Recreation & Wellness Center at the University of Portland in Oregon. 360 Architecture has also been a key player projects like Auburn University’s vibrant new recreation and wellness center in Auburn, Ala., as well as renovations to the University of Washington’s Husky Stadium in Seattle and Southern Methodist University’s Moody Coliseum in Dallas. The firm is now in the process of creating athletic facility master plans for both the University of Missouri and the University of North Carolina.

“360 Architecture is a progressive design firm that has helped lead the transformation of sports architecture,” said HOK President Bill Hellmuth, AIA, in a release. “These facilities have evolved into true destinations that are integrated into the urban fabric and are key components of vibrant, healthy cities.”

“Our shared vision of collaborating across specialties and markets will strengthen the approach that has been so important to our clients’ success,” added Tom Waggoner, AIA, senior principal at 360 Architecture. “Joining HOK also gives our dedicated, talented employees even more opportunities for growth, education and diversity in their careers. HOK is a great fit for our clients, our people and the Kansas City area.”

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“University of Missouri Health Care is proud that our patient care tower has achieved LEED Gold certification,” said Mitch Wasden, chief executive officer and chief operating officer of MU Health Care, in a statement. “This recognition demonstrates our commitment to providing patient and family-centered care in a healing environment, as well as our dedication to our community by being good stewards of the environment.”

The tower includes six operating rooms, 25 pre-procedure rooms, 18 post-procedure rooms, 90 private patient rooms with smart room technology, a 7,000-square-foot inpatient pharmacy with robotics to automatically dispense medications, a 1,800-square-foot lounge for families of surgery patients and a new facility for Ellis Fischel Cancer Center outpatient services.

The north-south orientation of the patient tower maximizes scenic views and connections to nature, providing views to Missouri farmland. Additionally, more than 100,000 square feet of roof gardens are located on the north and south sides of the building. The 3,150-square-foot Brown Family Healing Garden, specifically designed to reduce stress in patients and staff, is visible from all floors and serves as a crossroads between the new tower and the main hospital.

“Medical research has shown that patients benefit from a healing environment that provides a comfortable environment with natural light and a connection to nature,” said Paul Dale, chief of surgical oncology at Ellis Fischel Cancer Center and medical director of Ellis Fischel, in a statement. “Our achieving LEED Gold certification is a testament to our efforts to provide our patients with a state-of-the-art facility that puts our patients at the center of everything we do.”

MU Health Care originally sought simply LEED certification for the 310,500-square-foot addition, but HOK was able to exceed that goal and achieve a LEED Gold rating incorporating several green building techniques. HOK tied environmental systems into the University of Missouri’s existing biomass boiler, replacing a coal-burning boiler with one that burns hardwoods and wood waste to reduce the fossil fuel use of the campus by 25 percent. HOK also used locally sourced material, used a high-performance building skin, provided more efficient fixtures to reduce potable water use by 46 percent, used low VOC-emitting finish materials, and optimized natural light using high-efficiency glass.

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