Emporia State University in Kansas held a ribbon cutting ceremony on July 26 to officially open its brand-new Schallenkamp Hall. The modern living/learning community was designed by St. Louis, MO-based KWK Architects, with HTK Architects of Topeka, Kansas serving as the architect-of-record.
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Specifying Healthy Materials: “While we still see cases of Sick Building Syndrome today, we have certainly come a long way from the less healthy buildings of the 1980s. Today, designers are focused more than ever on specifying and constructing healthy buildings, including residence halls,” said KWK Architects Principal Javier Esteban. “Just to put into perspective the importance of this issue, according to the EPA, the average American spends up to 87% of their time indoors, inside buildings. We live and breathe in man-made spaces, with a certain amount of filtered fresh air surrounded by products with high levels of chemicals.” So, what is a healthy building, or more specifically, what constitutes a healthy residence hall?
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Many universities across the country are striving to design new residence halls based on the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards established by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). The latest version of these standards, LEED version 4 (LEED v4), shifts some of the responsibility for achieving certification from the design and construction process to the end-user and life cycle of the building.
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When designing a residence hall, special attention is given to architectural acoustics to help control noise and create a calmer, more peaceful environment for the students. Understanding sound isolation, mechanical noise and vibration control, and room acoustics is an essential component of designing any student housing facility. Because of these indeterminate and often subjective components of sound, several organizations have defined certain criteria to control or manage sound. The two most common are Impact Insulation Class (IIC, or otherwise known as Impact Noise Reduction) and Sound Transmission Class (STC).
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The main purpose of building codes is to protect health, safety and welfare as they relate to buildings and their construction, taking into consideration emergency evacuations in cases of fire and smoke. Emergency strategies and codes consider not only human behavior, but also the shape and function of the building, the number of occupants and how different events such as fire, smoke, storms, tornadoes and earthquakes affect different parts of the building.
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When designing or renovating a student housing facility, square footage, number of occupants and budget are often top design considerations. Designing for student safety ranks even higher, say the experts at KWK Architects. The North Residence Hall at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) includes exterior safety features as low landscaping, a blue emergency light, large glazing facing the public access, opportunities for seating at the entrance creates opportunities for students to see and be seen and exterior lighting.
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Students returning to historic Corbin Hall at the University of Kansas – Lawrence (KU) for the fall semester stepped into a newly renovated, modern space complete with upgraded mechanical systems, a new main entry and upgrades to all student rooms, restrooms and public spaces. St. Louis-based KWK Architects was tasked with designing the $13.5 million interior renovation, which required that the historic hall for women remain closed for the 2017-2018 school year.
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Described by donors as a “kitchen table” for the campus, Eikmeier Commons marks the final stage of the Olson Student Center’s $1.5 million dining hall (completed in the fall of 2017) and student commons renovation project. KWK Architects was the designer on both projects, as well other campus projects over the past year including an Athletic Training Facility Study and new business school in Omaha.
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KWK Architects Principal Paul Wuennenberg, AIA, LEED AP, along with Diane Brittingham, Director of Residence Life and Associate Director at the University of Oklahoma, will share their personal experiences and insights into designing a residential college vs. a traditional residence hall at the Association of College and University Housing Officers – International (ACUHO-I) Conference & Expo., July 7-10 in Denver, CO.
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The University of Missouri (Mizzou) in Columbia, MO is bustling with two new residence halls; a state-of-the-art, multi-restaurant dining facility; and a Starbucks coffeehouse – all designed by KWK Architects as part of a multi-phase community redevelopment project. The three-phased, master plan would include a total of five new residence halls and a distinctive dining facility to replace an outdated dining hall and three residential towers, all of which were demolished to make room for the new buildings.
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