The Atrium: Executive Education Center

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The Atrium: Executive Education Center

Type

Commercial › Office Retail Exhibition Center
Hospitality + Sport › Hotel
Educational › University Other

The seemingly disparate worlds of business and academia have conventionally been mutually exclusive. Challenging this standard is the rapid development and implementation of new technologies researched by universities and paid for with private funds. With universities searching for a means to support themselves outside of traditional endowments and governmental support, and the need for retraining the existing workforce, a new relationship develops. A relationship requiring specialized facilities.Program: Holding the building together, both literally and programmatically, is a four-season atrium. The central space is where the different elements connect through interweaving circulation paths. Where executives and students, lecturers and attendees, locals and visitors mingle. The design facilitates serendipitous interactions between inhabitants.Perched high above, filling the airspace overhead and filtering the light, are innovative vertical farming pods. These are essentially compact greenhouses that hang from the massive structure, within which aquaponic produce grows year-round, supplying the building with what it needs; the surplus can then be sold in a farmers’ market or through one of the retail stores.The building’s inclusion in the Freshwater Innovation Cluster is celebrated by means of the water required to cultivate the plants, which flows around the facade of the building and into the atrium, before returning to its source 700 feet to the east. By integrating vertical farming into the building’s iconic space, the students who come to the cluster are inspired by the possibilities of freshwater innovation every day.Structure: The atrium physically connects building’s various uses together through its monumental “composite columns”. The 30 individual pieces that make up each component are shipped to the site and welded together before being hoisted into place. This eliminates the need for shipping oversized elements to the site as well as minimizing the amount of time the crane must be used.To showcase the architectural possibilities of precast concrete, in addition to creating a large open space with long spans, the six massive columns in the atrium work together as the building’s structural core. The individual columns take all gravity loads, and the concrete web in between mitigate lateral forces. Further connecting the vertical elements are trusses that span the width of the atrium, the height of which correlate to the building’s floor-to-floor height, allowing them to be used to connect people as well as structure. Once welded together, all the pieces of the compo-column work as a single structural element.To alleviate the effects of the wind off Lake Michigan, the lattice facade of the building functions as a shear wall in addition to adding a sophisticated geometric order to the south side of the public quad.