KSQ/Peterson (a regional office of KSQ Architects) is serving as the lead design firm for the new facility in partnership with Brackett Flagship Properties and Tyler 2 Construction. All three companies are based in Charlotte, N.C. The project is currently in the schematic design phase and is scheduled for completion in January 2017.

The new building is part of the university’s Millennial Initiative, which provides space for WCU faculty and students to work together with private firms, government agencies and non-profits on applied research and practices that benefit the entire region. “WCU is in a position to enter into public-private partnerships to enhance regional economic development beyond the university’s traditional educational mission,” said KSQ/Peterson Principal-in-Charge Doug Burns, AIA. “This promotes exciting new educational opportunities for students and faculty, and this new building is the designated space for those collaborations, learning opportunities and partnerships.”

In addition to being a medical office building, the space will offer a health retail component, flexible research space, and house clinics and services linked to WCU programs that offer collaborations between health care partners in the region and WCU faculty and students. As a Community Engaged University, WCU plans to enhance economic development in the region and create a community-oriented health workforce.

The new building was designed to visually complement the nearby Health and Human Science building — the first building on the campus — as well as vertically connect the two buildings together as a passageway, according to Burns. “We rebranded the entrance and created a new identity,” he added. “When people arrive at WCU’s Millennial Campus, there’s a road that has a leisurely wind to it and showcases the buildings tucked into a lush, Carolina setting.”

Inside, the building features collaborative spaces throughout with plug-and-play technology that offers information. There are also flexible and clinical spaces incorporated into the design as well as kiosk and bistro food-service areas that will provide food for up to 3,000 people.

“Connectivity, sustainable practices, flexible furniture and extensive use of natural light are important features for millennials,” said KSQ/Peterson Associate and Senior Project Manager David Meech, AIA. “The challenge of this design was to keep millennials in mind, but also design for the health care and regional business professionals that will occupy this space.”

Meech added that the site has been the biggest challenge on the project. “Besides the topography and need for horizontal connectivity, it’s important for the new facility to be part of a contextual design that enhances the existing four-story, LEED Gold Health and Human Science building and future buildings on the site,” he said. “We also designed to assure compliance to the Millennium Campus Mission and WCU’s Master Plan for the campus. The programming and planning considered WCU’s goal of being a regionally engaged university and a national model — going beyond a typical educational or medical space and incorporating the needs of different end-users into the design.”

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The new dining hall makes similar amenities in the student union now available to students in the Worth Hills Village community, which will house 1,770 residents when complete. The 39,200-square-foot dining hall features 710 seats and four dining venues, including a Tex-Mex option, bistro, grill and healthy grab-n-go-market. A variety of seating options from tables and chairs to bar seating to a lounge-style area create a living room effect.

The dining area features a high, classical barrel-vault ceiling, creating an open feel. The high ceiling also has acoustical panels formed into folded origami shapes that descend throughout the space. Large windows create an abundance of natural light and provide students with a connection to the outdoors.

A balcony from the second floor juts into another double-volume space and connects visually to the second floor where a glass encased elevator and stair open to soft seating, Greek life offices and flexible space that can be used for dining, studying or socializing. All seating areas feature several power outlets and Wi-Fi access to support student connectivity needs. Large format televisions are also scattered throughout to encourage students to gather to watch sports games, movies or their favorite shows.

The exterior features a small amphitheater, which can be used for performances or speakers. A large-scale projector that can project images against the building wall is accompanied by built-in seating for audience members.

The project deadline posed a challenge when it was moved up by roughly eight months (from August 2014 to January 2014), and the team had to work hard to complete work in time, said Monica Roberts, senior associate, communications manager, KSQ Architects. “We have an established relationship with The Beck Group on TCU projects, and together we met the deadline,” she said.

Lindsay Reeds, LEED AP, associate, project manager, KSQ Architects, added, “There were standard project challenges such as how to build a building to meet the needs and to meet the budget at the same time. We redesigned the facility several times to provide more space and the special features the client wanted. There were also site restraints and requirements to save special trees. We accomplished both with careful design and construction care.”

As a result, the KSQ team achieved a perfect score in the Innovation and Design Process category for the LEED Gold certification. The team also received high marks for the use of recycled content and materials, water-use reduction, green power and energy measurement and verification, and offering public transportation access and alternative transportation incentives to students.

“The students love the space, and they use it for much more than just dining,” Reeds said. “The building offers several spaces to hang out and to study, and those spaces are very successful.”

In 2013, the university debuted the two-building residence hall, known as Marion and Clark Halls, the first of the three phases planned for the Worth Hills Village development. The residence hall offers 400 suite-style student beds designed for sophomores. KSQ designed all phases of the Worth Hills Village project, including the Greek housing project currently under development.

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Edison Preparatory School in Tulsa is one school that is taking these design considerations seriously. Construction broke ground on Nov. 25 on an 18,500-square-foot collegiate center that will also function as two FEMA-361, ICC-500-rated safe rooms. Not only will the safe rooms provide safety in the event of a tornado, but they will also double as major testing sites for the entire Tulsa Public Schools district. The addition will include two new lecture halls as the safe rooms, as well as a college-counseling center that will serve as an incentive to attract more students.

Scheduled for completion in summer 2015, the project will be quite the undertaking because of its multipurpose needs. School Construction News spoke with Kyle Casper, lead designer for KSQ Architects in the firm’s Tulsa office, about the complexity of designing such a multifunctional space.

Q: What is the main goal of the project?

Casper: Because it’s a preparatory school, the main goal of the building project is to attract students to this particular school rather than to the other schools in other districts that may have more resources. The primary goal of the school was to put a hood ornament out there that said the school was competitive and adventurous and entrepreneurial — the context and identity that prepares you for college. So, it’s an adventurous and exciting design. KSQ is known for [working on] student housing and dining projects but also has a history of putting character buildings in higher education, and we’re looking to do that in the K-12 market in Tulsa. The lecture halls are better characterized as testing centers, and they have about 100 different functions. It has been a very fascinating exercise in integrating so many things in a building and then basically locking it in a concrete vault.

Q: What are some of the key elements involved in the design of the new space?

Casper: It’s a secure school, so [the addition] is not going to be very transparent or open. They already put a library at the front doors, where everyone has to go through a secure checkpoint. It was difficult for us because our site was right next door to the library. We blocked off even visual access of how to get in and out of the building, so we wanted our building to solve and explain circulation issues.

The second really challenging issue was the programming of the building. All of the school events have so many needs. We have a laundry list of different testing requirements. For instance, we have to be able to fit [students] 5-feet apart, and everyone has to have an equal visual and acoustical access. There are a lot of technical and just testing dynamics that had to go into these storm shelters. The walls are 1-foot thick, the roof is 2-feet thick and both are made of all concrete.

Q: What are the key factors in designing a tornado shelter?

Casper: This is the highest rated FEMA shelter that you can get. There are five different ratings, but this is the 360 one, which is near absolute protection. There are all sorts of interesting things you have to do with natural ventilation backup systems and providing restrooms in a place without plumbing. You’re just rethinking everything from the ground up and then putting a testing center in the middle of it. A testing center is going to have the highest amount of technology of almost any type of building. Then, you’re putting it in an impenetrable, concrete box and planning that, when all the systems go down, everyone can still breathe and subsist. I do a lot of work for decentralized energy and risk reduction, so these ideas and technology can come out of the shelter and can be used in people’s homes, communities or shopping centers. Since the project is being mandated, we have the opportunity to have to figure it out.

Q: What do you foresee being the biggest challenge on this project when construction begins?

Casper: With any project the biggest challenge is often ensuring the project meets the wants and needs of all the stakeholders. We have principals very excited about having this building that people want to see and be seen in — as architects, that’s exciting for us also. But we always have to balance practicality, considering the structural and mechanical requirements, of course.

Q: Why do you think more 21st school designs are incorporating multidisciplinary spaces?

Casper: One thing is cost and budget. The more you can integrate program-wise into a singular space helps, but you also have to figure out security and circulation issues. It can be built into BIM, but [the school administration] also has to build it into coordinating those spaces. We used to have to provide a specific functional space, but now we are designing spaces that are able to have a lot of functions.
 

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“Key design elements included study lounges that are a glassy ‘fish bowl’ concept that KSQ has designed on other campuses,” Studzinski said. “These transparent spaces allow students to model good study habits in this ‘see and be seen’ environment.”

Natural light was brought into the corridors to keep hallways from feeling dark, while community kitchens and a recreation and game-room area in the basement enhances the residence hall’s sense of community. A central, open staircase connects all floors to the basement recreation area, which allows that space to feel more connected and accessible to the rest of the building. Each floor also features its own color palette through paint and floor coverings to create a unique identity. Studzinski added, “The community kitchens are large, featuring a full-size refrigerator and oven with bar-top seating so that students can easily cook together and build relationships through the process.”
The student rooms — 19 of which are single occupant, while the others are double — include moveable furniture such as a fully loftable bed, desk and chest of drawers. The project also included a new laundry area and vending machines, a fitness room on the basement level, and new and redesigned community bath areas with lockable shower entry doors.
“Like many universities, the budget presented some challenges for the client and the design team,” said Jeff Doyle, Baylor University’s Dean for Student Learning and Engagement. “KSQ continually listened to Baylor’s input on what they wanted in this building and worked to minimize the loss of priorities to ensure the spaces still felt like somewhere a college student could call home.”
Construction on North Russell Hall is currently underway, while renovations to Martin, Penland, Collins, Alexander, Allen-Dawson and Memorial halls will soon follow, according to the university plan. All of the Baylor residence hall renovations will include faculty-in-residence apartments that, at approximately 2,400 square feet, provide faculty and their families a space that truly feels like home.
“We have kept our focus creating a transformational student experience, rooted in opportunities for positive peer leader, faculty and staff influence,” Doyle said. “With KSQ’s help, we have taken an almost 50-year old building and recreated it as a home for learning, friendship and growth that will serve our students for another 50 years.”

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A dramatic barrel-vault archway serves as a figurative and literal connector to the surrounding TCU campus. Marion and Clark Halls is the first of three phases planned for the Worth Hills Village development, which will eventually include a third residence hall, a parking structure, a dining or multipurpose building and Greek Village. In total, the development will house 1,800 students.

School Construction News spoke with David Short, principal at KSQ Architects, about the development and what it means to design housing facilities for 21st century students.

Q: What was the main goal of the project?

Short: In the original housing master plan, [the university] had planned to replace all the housing in Worth Hills Village in the next 10 years, but it had been more like 12 to 14 years. It outlived a lot of its uses. Worth Hills was perceived to be a long walk from campus and wasn’t very connected to the campus. Over that 15-year period from when the original master plan was done to when this started, the university purchased all that market property and took it all down except for one building. We really designed this facility to have a stronger connection to the residential portion of the campus and the main campus as a whole.

Q: What is the key difference between designing housing facilities for today’s students versus the ones 10 years ago?

Short: I think the main difference is the expectations of the students, who expect a lot more —particularly freshman coming in. Most students at TCU come from a place where they had their own bedroom and maybe even their own bathroom, so all the students that come that’s what they ought to have. The goal of the university is not to isolate these students but to create an environment to support their growth academically and socially as well. These spaces are designed to build strong communities. This complex will house mostly sophomores, so it has a little more privacy but is still designed to be community building. The rooms are designed so they can’t really hibernate in them and they don’t want to.

The new dining halls, for instance, are being designed for student use during all hours of the day and night, with lots of variety and high-end choices for the students. They really want lots of choices. The new dining halls are not only used dining, but they’re student spaces for study, hanging out, interaction, gaming and reading, and dining’s just part of that experience for the student.

Q: What were some of the challenges that occurred on the project?

Short: The biggest challenge on almost every project is giving the client everything they want for the budget they have. I think we did some good value engineering on the project to design a building that really serves as a gateway for the Worth Hills campus. I think some of the cool things we did were create some two-story spaces and some nice volumes in the building that really make the space feel open. We did that economically by having little slits of two-story space so you feel more of that connection to the floor above you (as opposed to big atriums).

Q: What did you learn from the project?

Short: One of the things we learned is that you can never build enough community space in a resident hall where students can gather and hang out and exchange ideas and talk and play the guitar. I think that’s one of the biggest differences in these new residence halls versus the traditional ones. They have so many places that the students can get together. Even on the difficult floors, it’s about understanding that students use those hallways as community space. I think that every building we do we learn that we can never quite exhaust how we design the building to meet those needs; always looking for new ideas and new opportunities in those buildings.

In Texas, we have the luxury of wide open spaces and being able to spread out horizontally a little bit. This housing facility is four stories, so what’s nice about that versus nine stories is that students are more apt to take the stairs. What we hear from TCU students that have looked at other schools is that it feels different. They can accidentally run into people and have unplanned interactions because they are taking the stairs. That is part of what makes these TCU building’s special and contributes to that sense of community.

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The 40,000-square-foot addition and renovation to the existing, 1960s-era Kelly Dining Hall opened in time for the 2013 school year. It provides more than 400 inside and outside seating options and offers a variety of dining platforms. Digital displays present the six menu choices that range from Eastern Cuisine to Bob’s BBQ.

“The biggest criteria that’s so wonderful about Stony Brook is the diversity — different culinary expectations and needs,” said Armand Quadrini, principal at New York-based KSQ Architects, the architect on the project. “Kosher, halal and in between elements are addressed in this dining center.”

The dining hall’s six dining “platforms,” as Juana Gomez, project architect for KSQ, described them, each offer a display-cooking aspect that allows students to connect visually with the food preparation areas, giving them an understanding of the quality of food they’re eating. At each platform, a patron can also purchase an entire meal — quite different than the food court set-up that the previous dining hall had.

“This building is not only a beautiful architectural jewel, it has changed the way the students can see how to eat on campus dining,” Gomez said. “It’s not cafeteria-style dining. Each platform is functioning as a mini restaurant and is served like it was cooked for you.”

The university was in need of a modernized ground level dining center that met their needs in terms of a diverse menu and ease of service, Quadrini said. As such, the building features a contemporary design. He described it as a “very glassy lantern that invites community and activity and people into the structure.”

The previous building had a Brutalist character, so KSQ developed a modern glass “shard” steel and curtain wall envelope. The design team brought the shard right out into the street for what Quadrini called, “a more urban approach,” unlike the other buildings on campus that are situated within the landscape. This gives students more of a connection the environment and the pedestrian culture of the road. Another key design element included a garden wall, which visually blocks the loading dock access from the road.

Designed to achieve LEED Silver certification, the building features a white bitumen asphalt roof, glass frit and low-e coating on the curtain wall to decrease sun exposure, waterless urinals and an automated vent hood system throughout the kitchen. The project team also used recycled materials, diverted construction waste and created water-efficient landscaping.

One of the major challenges on the project was phasing the project to keep the existing dining hall open during construction and completing the new dining hall before closing the existing one for renovations. The fact that site was also sandwiched between a number of student housing facilities also posed a challenge, especially since the design team wanted to keep all of the landscape surrounding the building.

In October, the project received honor awards from two New York state chapters. It was awarded an Excellence in Architecture Award by the Long Island AIA chapter, and also received an Honor Award from the Westchester Hudson Valley AIA chapter.

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