© Timothy Hursley
- Architects: BNIM, Ennead Architects
- Location: Manhattan, KS, United States
- Area: 186111.0 ft2
- Project Year: 2017
- Photographs: Timothy Hursley
- Structural: Walter P. Moore and Associates Inc.
- Mep: Henderson Engineers Inc.
- Civil: BG Consultants Inc.
- Landscape: Confluence
- Fabrication Lab Planner: el dorado inc.
- Av/It/Acoustics: Sextant Group
- Building Code: Fire Protection & Code Consultants
© Timothy Hursley
Text description provided by the architects. Responding to the College’s focus on the designer as an instrument for positive change in the world, the building design creates a sense of place for APDesign and supports a new curriculum that trains future leaders to reconnect the act of design to making through inter-disciplinary collaboration and a focus on direct fabrication.
© Timothy Hursley
The design maximizes opportunities for communication and cross-fertilization of ideas between APDesign Departments – Architecture, Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning, Interior Architecture and Product Design – and related disciplines.
© Timothy Hursley
Ground Level Plan
© Timothy Hursley
First Level Plan
© Timothy Hursley
The building is a didactic tool to showcase the fabrication-based research of the school’s design community. Studios, crit spaces, exhibition areas, collaboration pods, and faculty offices are arranged around an axial three-story atrium, the “collaboration corridor,” to foster a rapid exchange of intellectual and technical knowledge.
© Timothy Hursley
The project also introduces new research laboratories and vertically-integrated studios that comprise a 24-hour “Design Information Commons,” a new feature to a reconfigured Weigel Library.
© Timothy Hursley