Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/59979
At Illinois State University, the new building for the College of Business had to satisfy a wide range of constituents who wanted specific design features. The final building was designed around a courtyard, allowing all faculty to have windows on one side or the other, while Georgian architecture matched existing campus buildings. In new business school buildings, tech- nology is the same from room to room so that professors are always familiar with the controls. courtyard or on the exterior. We used beautiful Georgian architecture on the exterior, but inside we have a $1.6 million AV system, 28 classrooms, ten meeting rooms, and the fur- nishings of a professional corporate facility." "The Living Room of the School" Another goal shared by many of today's b-school administra- tors is to create a space where students will want to stay all day, whether they're taking a class, studying, or just relaxing. That means constructing facilities that offer a range of necessities and creature comforts, from food to online connections. At the University of Chicago, the Graduate School of Busi- ness opened a $125 million new facility in 2004. The building offers a student lounge, pool tables, a television, group study rooms, and a student study with carrels, open tables, and a fire- place. All students are assigned lockers so they can drop off coats and backpacks before heading to class. "We wanted this to feel like their destination for the day," says Leann Paul, project consultant for the Chicago GSB. "We thought of a number of amenities that made living in the building all day comfortable for everyone, particularly students." The place students are most likely to feel at home is the central atrium, a nearly universal element of most new busi- ness schools. It has become not just a design element, says Tattoni, but "the living room of the school"—the place where students congregate, entertain, and relax. At the ChicagoGSB, for instance, the atriumis a winter garden filled with space and light; it has become a magnet for students throughout the university. "It becomes more important that we find these spaces to gather as our society becomes more wired and more hooked 32 BizEd NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 Amenities such as student lounges, group study rooms, and student lockers are designed to make students want to linger at the Chicago GSB throughout the day. Even though the new building is 415,000 square feet, students say it feels like home. up," says Kent Duffy, a principal at Portland-based SRG Partnership Inc. and architect for the Lundquist School. Nonetheless, architects know an atrium should be more than a meeting space for students; it should also be highly functional. "You don't want a big 3,000-square-foot circula- tion hall that becomes kind of useless," Tattoni says. "The out- side should be the stakeholder identity for the school or cam- pus, and the inside should be the 'welcome-visitor' punch." State-of-the-Art Technology Another key reason to construct a new building is to be able to outfit it with the latest technology. At Georgia Tech, for Continued on page 35