Stevens & Wilkinson is working in association with VMDO Architects to provide architectural, engineering and interior design services for the Glenn and Towers Residence Halls revamp. This project will completely replace the buildings’ aging infrastructure systems, and bring both up to current ADA standards. More than 63,000 square feet will be upgraded in Glenn Hall, while just over 53,000 feet will benefit from renovations in Towers Hall.
“The 616 residents will enjoy new expanded social and study lounges, restrooms and laundries on every floor,” said Ron Stang, AIA, LEED AP, chairman for Stevens & Wilkinson Georgia in a statement.. “The renovation scope includes incorporating new elevators; converting existing open attic spaces into two new residential floors; and replacing slate roofs and historically accurate windows.”
The firms have also designed a new 8,400-square-foot facility that will connect the two residence halls, finally fulfilling the school’s original 1940 master plan. This structure will include a fitness center, several multipurpose meeting rooms, a classroom and a collection of study rooms. Thanks to a variety of sustainability measures, the combined 125,000-square-foot project is currently on track for LEED Gold certification upon its completion in mid 2015.
Exterior upgrades will include establishing a new outdoor recreation and entertainment space, as well as a walkway better linking the halls to other parts of the campus.
“The renovation of the halls sets the stage for the establishment of enriched student living accommodations that are in keeping with the high level of standards for which Georgia Tech is known,” Stang said.

Concurrently, Stevens & Wilkinson is completing an overhaul of three Clemson University housing facilities. In keeping with its 2002 Campus Master Plan, the university will demolish and replace three major buildings in the campus’ center in a quest to fundamentally reimagine the entire Core Campus Precinct, according to a statement from Stevens & Wilkinson.

During the initial development of Clemson’s Campus Master Plan, the university conducted a study examining forward-looking approaches to its housing, academic, dining and student life programs, and how they might be combined into a dynamic, mixed-used facility. VMDO Architects was also selected to direct the Clemson project, and again partnered with Stevens & Wilkinson, as well as Sasaki Associates with offices in Shanghai and Watertown, Mass.

VMDO developed a 700-bed housing initiative then collaborated with the two firms to develop “a clear and engaging vision for the precinct’s evolution,” according to Stevens & Wilkinson. The Clemson University Core Campus Housing project is scheduled for completion in 2016. The project will involve 179,000 square feet of residential space, with an additional 76,000 square feet of dining space and 5,000 square feet of academic space.

"The design fits very well with the Campus Master Plan and has embellished it in ways we could never have otherwise articulated,” said Gerald Vander May, director, campus planning for Clemson University, in a statement. “The program was very challenging, but through innovative problem solving and tireless interaction, the team has taken the complex goals of the university and fashioned a vision that has taken root.”

The post Firms Partner for Two University Residence Projects appeared first on School Construction News.

Terry Huang, chairman and professor of health promotion, social and behavioral health department at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and a member of the committee that helped Michelle Obama shape her agenda on childhood obesity, authored the report Healthy Eating Design Guidelines for School Architecture (HEDG).

“Our behaviors are a function of our environment, not just free will,” Huang said. “Good space design can make behaving healthily easier.”

HEDG was formulated in order to provide architects with theory-based strategies to bring student health to the forefront of design and promote healthy eating behaviors.

“There is much evidence on the role of the built environment in shaping health and learning,” Huang said. “No prior research has really focused on the role of school architecture in relation to healthy eating and active living, however.”

In an effort to combat the childhood obesity epidemic, in which 20 percent of children aged 6 to 11 are obese, Huang developed the design guidelines that feature 10 domains of the school food environment and describes five core healthy eating design principles.

“Health and learning should be integrated with the design of school space,” Huang said. “The space should make healthy behaviors the default behaviors and prompt students to become active learners about nutrition and health.”

According to the study, the research and design process relied on five key elements: a unified vision and common goals and values; identification of required skills and resources; a focus on connecting conceptual and practical considerations; development of a common lexicon; and an open and iterative culture for exchange of ideas.

The design elements were tested via a pilot program with Buckingham elementary and primary schools in the town of Dillwyn in central Virginia.

Completed in August 2012 at a cost of $18.3 million, the 134,000-square-foot Buckingham County primary and elementary schools were designed by VMDO Architects. Formerly a middle school and high school, the K-5 campus includes a teaching kitchen, nutritional displays, open servery, food lab, scratch bakery, dehydrating food composter and outdoor student gardens.

The rural setting of Dillwyn posed specific obstacles to the children at Buckingham schools, said Pennie Allen, principal of Buckingham Primary School. Many children come from single parent homes that are unknowledgeable or feel financially unable to provide healthy eating choices at home, she said.

“When it comes to nutrition and the importance of exercise, most young parents don’t understand how important it is to teach these ideas at an early age,” Allen said in a statement. “Many parents and grandparents have poor health habits themselves and as a result suffer the consequences of heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and cancer. Today’s children are forming bad habits in the area of nutrition and exercise based on family cultures.”

Huang said the children of Buckingham County will now have greater chance at success and will break a cycle of obesity that can be passed down from generation to generation.

The UNMC professor stated the top five strategies schools can implement in order to prioritize health are the establishment and enforcement of policies that ensure a healthy nutrition environment; “nudge” students to opt for healthier foods or increase physical activity; limit marketing of unhealthy foods on campus; physical education that allows students to explore how they like to be active; and administrators must lead by example.

According to Maggie Thacker, director of marketing with VMDO Architects, follow-up studies are to come and designers hope the outcome spurs rich conversation on the topic of student health and architectural design.

“The global childhood obesity epidemic is more than a wake up call for designers; it marks a crisis of ethos for us as a community of experts who create the environments in which children live, learn, and play,” said Dina Niris Sorensen, designer with VMDO Architects, in a statement. “Children don’t decide where to build a home, park, school, or grocery store or if they will have access to an education that includes learning about nutrition and an active, healthy lifestyle. So the ethical question we have to ask ourselves as a design community is: what kind of experts are we if we ignore the evidence?”

The post New Study Links Student Health with Architectural Design appeared first on School Construction News.