Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Railing Enhances Openness of Student Center

  • 07/01/18
Trex Commercial Products

Trex Commercial Products’ Track Rail helped create overlooks that enhanced the open-concept plan of the new Jim and Martie Bultman Center’s lobby at Hope College.

Hope College in Holland, MI, is a private liberal-arts college known for providing research-based education to a diverse body of students. In 2017, the college was in the midst of planning its first new student center in over 35 years. This new facility—The 42,000-square-foot Jim and Martie Bultman Center—would be designed to have a large multipurpose room, a lounge, student study areas, and a coffee shop.

In designing the Bultman Student Center, architects placed an emphasis on “openness.” The college wanted a building that made students feel welcome, and promoted inclusion amongst all members of the campus community. With this in mind, the plan and design of the new space focused on a building layout that promoted lightness and a freedom of movement among the various floors and rooms. A visual connection between spaces was important.

As the design process progressed, architects realized they would need a sturdy railing to accompany the open-concept lobby of the facility. After researching various options, they recommended, and Hope chose, Trex Commercial Products’ (TCP) Track Rail. The minimalist rail would help create safe overlook areas so students could see into the lobby of the center from different floors, creating an overall feeling of connectedness and inclusiveness. The railing would be coupled with tempered glass and attached to the wall.

Over 341 linear feet of Track Rail were used in the new facility. The new rails fit in perfectly with the warm architectural accents of the building. These warm accents and open areas help make the new facility stand out as a central part of the campus community that all students, faculty, and staff can be a part of. With a quick installation time, TCP’s Track Rails were in place and ready when the Bultman Student Center opened at the start of the 2017-2018 academic year.

www.trex.com

This article originally appeared in the College Planning & Management July/August 2018 issue of Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • Architectural Power for the Modern Campus Landscape

    For generations, an outdoor classroom only required a textbook and a patch of grass. Today, not only has the laptop replaced the printed pages, the rise of agile learning has turned campuses into study halls with students listening to lectures and researching topics from quads, gardens, and plazas. The challenge for architects and facility managers is to provide connectivity without cluttering the landscape with visual eyesores or creating safety hazards with extension cords.

  • Colorado School District Breaks Ground on Unified PK–12 Campus

    The Haxtun School District No. Re-2J in Haxtun, Colo., recently announced that ground has been broken on a renovation/addition project that will unite its two schools, Haxtun Elementary and Haxtun Jr/Sr High School, according to a news release.

  • Q&A: How to Prevent Kitchen Grease Fires in Commercial Kitchens

    School cafeterias and university dining halls serve thousands of meals daily, relying on high-heat equipment like fryers, grills, and ovens. While these operations keep students fed, they also generate significant grease-laden vapors. Without proper controls, this grease becomes a silent fire threat. As a certified exhaust cleaning specialist and business coach who has helped hundreds of institutional facilities achieve NFPA 96 compliance, I emphasize that proactive grease management isn’t optional; it’s a core fire/life safety practice.

  • Montclair State University Starts Construction on $120M STEM Building

    Montclair State University in Montclair, N.J., recently broke ground on a new $120-million Interdisciplinary Science Building, according to university news. The university partnered with HoK Architects for the project’s design, and it’s scheduled to open in time for the 2028–29 academic year.