Creating an Interconnected Science Complex

Faculty and Student Research on a Growing Campus

Connecting Graf Hall, Keck Hall, and Murdock Hall facilitates interdisciplinary research and discovery at the Science Center. To encourage collaboration between the sciences, departments are arranged in “neighborhoods” adjacent to wayfinding paths and grouped near shared research hubs. Upper division labs connect to research facilities and encourage joint use of learning spaces. The heart of the Science Center is the central, grouped learning spaces adjacent to faculty offices. Students can choose to utilize both lively and quiet study zones with access to labs, professors, and peers.

Flexibility and Campus Connection

The Evenstad Wine Classroom is part of a network of three classrooms separated by operable walls. The walls can stay down to make three separate rooms, or the walls can retract, providing a light-filled event space connected to the lobby and outdoors. With the Evenstad Wine Laboratory just across the lobby, this event space is a fabulous venue for students to showcase the results of fermentation studies, as well as fundraising events, community celebrations, and other academic gatherings.

Harmonizing the visual context of the campus, the contemporary expression of red brick and white window frames respects both the traditional aesthetic of the majority of the University’s historic buildings and the modernist sensibility of the adjacent connecting buildings constructed in the 1960’s and 80’s.  The east-facing entry plaza features specialty paving, fixed seating, and a covered terrace, and its location along a primary walking path near the university quad, cafeteria, and coffee shop reinforces the connection to campus.