Judging has wrapped for the 2014 AIA/DC Design Awards and we are pleased to announce that the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University has received an award in architecture.
The project explores how an academic building can embody the values of public health. The program includes offices, classrooms, auditoriums, a convening center and exercise science labs. Planned for 6 stories, a 7th floor was inserted by squeezing the typical floor-to-floor height to 12 feet. Each floor is perforated with atriums that drive daylight and air deep into the building’s 140’ thick core. Elevators are screened from view to reduce reliance upon their use, and an irresistible, sky-lit stair ascends all 8 floors to encourage physical activity. Classrooms are set back from the glazed exterior wall to give student study and social spaces a panoramic view of Washington Circle, one of the city’s iconic urban spaces. Centrally located kitchenettes provide users with nutritional alternatives. All offices have standing desks and interior plants introduce greenery.
The building utilizes low energy HVAC systems, including a dedicated outdoor air system, active chilled beams and underfloor displacement ventilation in the auditorium spaces. Together with other sustainable features — such as LED illumination, greywater reuse, a rainscreen façade, bi-level lamp switching, CO2-based ventilation control, high-efficiency chillers, a green roof, bamboo wall paneling and the use of slag concrete additives — the project achieved LEED v3 Platinum Certification.
This project was designed in association with Ayers Saint Gross.
This week, we`re celebrating the recently opened Hursey Center at the University of Hartford.
Driven by the University’s desire to create “a destination and activity hub” in the center of campus, the Hursey Center sits prominently in the middle of the Main Green. This unusual approach disrupts the campus’ existing organization, reducing the amount of primary open space but replacing it with several smaller open areas, recalibrating the scale and form of the campus and improving its character, spatial structure and hierarchy.
#designalways #artofmaking #architecture #archdaily #universityofhartford