A New Heart of Campus

College of Business Building at UNL

PHOTO COURTESY OF APMA

The new College of Business Building at UNL achieves a sense of openness thanks to a Wausau curtainwall.

The newly opened University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) College of Business building quickly is becoming known as the “heart of the UNL campus,” thanks to its prominent location and distinctive design featuring curtainwall from Wausau Window and Wall Systems. Demonstrating the importance of this project, alumni and private donations funded the $84 million construction project.

According to the project’s lead architect, New York-based Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA), Wausau’s curtainwall was used to “provide a sense of both openness and permanence” for the new College of Business building. Alley Poyner Macchietto Architecture (APMA) served as the project’s associate architect.

The new five-story, 240,000-square-foot building sits at the east end of the campus’s iconic Memorial Mall.

Wausau’s engineering team previously worked with RAMSA on such notable projects as The Clarendon Boston residential tower, Penn State University’s Smeal College of Business and Virginia’s Richmond Federal Courthouse. “Thanks to a good relationship and solid history of successful projects with RAMSA and APMA, we were involved early in the project,” says Doug Laffin, Wausau’s architectural sales representative.

“We were able to propose an engineered solution to match their design goals, as well as to provide input on realistic budget pricing and meeting the aggressive schedule.” Wausau’s INvision unitized curtainwall systems were established as the basis of design. General contractor Hausmann Construction selected City Glass Co. and Glass Edge as the glazing contractors. Together, they installed more than 60,000 square feet of Wausau’s curtainwall.

With respect to longevity, the new College of Business replaces the former 98-year-old college, which had become too small to hold the more than 5,200 business students, faculty, and staff who use the building each academic year.

www.wausauwindow.com

This article originally appeared in the College Planning & Management January 2018 issue of Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • California Middle School Breaks Ground on Major Renovation Project

    The Hillsborough City School District (HCSD) in Hillsborough, Calif., recently began construction on new multipurpose and administration facilities for Crocker Middle School, according to a news release.

  • Rethinking K-12 Schools as a Continuous Learning Experience

    Most students move through three or more separate facilities during their K-12 journey, yet the built environments they encounter at each stage have traditionally been designed in isolation, with little continuity in spatial language, learning philosophy, or physical resources. Each new school is a reset with different layouts, learning models, expectations, and ways of moving through a building. The next generation of school design is making the case that the first day of kindergarten and the last day of high school can and should feel connected through common support systems and infrastructure in the physical environment.

  • Virginia Tech Tops Out New College of Engineering Building

    Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., recently celebrated the topping out of Mitchell Hall, which will soon stand as the largest College of Engineering building on campus, according to a news release. The university partnered with Skanska on the 285,500-square-foot facility, which has an expected completion date of winter 2028.

  • Tennessee Middle School Completes Health, Life Safety Renovations

    The Giles County Board of Education in Pulaski, Tenn., recently announced that a series of renovation projects has been completed at Bridgeforth Middle School, according to a news release. The district partnered with Wold Architects & Engineers and Brindley Construction to modernize building systems at one of the district’s oldest schools.