The Mark & Paula Hurd Welcome Center provides a new, grand entrance to the Baylor University campus, which serves prospective students, alumni, current students, faculty, and community leaders. Its dramatic, modern design celebrates the university’s rich history and traditions. The Grand Hall’s roof is pierced by four, interactive light towers that extend nearly 30 feet above the roof. The north and south facades feature full-height glass curtain walls, while the east and west walls are flanked by shorter administrative buildings. As the structural engineer, our team was challenged to design an efficient and cost-effective system that could support the intricate and complex geometries created by long spans, tall spaces, and ambitious cantilevers, as well as complex tree-like features along the east and west walls.
As visitors enter the building from either the north or the south, they pass through a 70-foot-tall curtain wall into the column-free, single-level Grand Hall. To support this vast open space, our team used a combination of structural systems. We were able to locate braced frames within the walls of the administrative buildings on the east and west sides of the hall, but we still needed to support the top 30 feet of these walls as well as provide lateral support to the north and south curtain walls. The hall is surrounded by highly articulated tree-branch framing, which serves as an architectural feature. Our team worked closely with the architect to conceal the remaining structural supports for the hall itself and its roof—which cantilevers 50 feet beyond the curtain walls—within these tree-like features.
A second challenge posed by the modern, minimalist design was the design of the four nearly 100-foot-tall Light Towers, which pass through the roof of the Grand Hall. Representing Baylor's core values—to Reflect, Connect, Aspire, and Amplify—these towers are illuminated 24/7 and serve as beacons, visible across the campus and from nearby Interstate 35. Our team was challenged to minimize the structural framing in these towers to avoid distracting from the desired effect. To keep the structural supports as inconspicuous as possible, our team devised a means of using the roof to provide lateral support to the towers while keeping it from transferring any of its weight to them. This reduced the amount of lateral bracing required along the towers’ length while eliminating the need to fireproof the towers as would have been necessary if they had provided vertical support for the roof.
The final challenge posed by the complex geometries of the Grand Hall is the 250-seat auditorium which protrudes from the south façade and appears to float above the plaza outside. The structural design team achieved this by cantilevering both the floor and auditorium roof from the column line behind the south façade and embedding the braced frames required for the overturning effect inside the tree branch framing along the side walls. Similarly, the upper stair landing was supported by sloping columns that were, again, hidden inside the tree-branch-shaped architectural feature. By aligning or embedding the structural framing at strategic locations inside the architectural features, the design team made the columns and braces disappear to accomplish this distinctive feature.
The Hurd Welcome Center has quickly become an important hub for Baylor’s downtown Waco campus. It hosts welcome events for new students and important staff and faculty events, serves as headquarters for recruiting events, is the default starting point for campus tours, and even offers travelers along Interstate 35 a much-needed break as they pass through Waco