Regents OK College of Design addition
Nathan Pitsch
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The Iowa Board of Regents approved plans for a $6.25 million addition to the College of Design building at its Feb. 6 meeting.
Mark Engelbrecht, dean of the College of Design, said the project has two main goals. The first is to build a test bed for sustainable design.
"We are increasingly interested in sustainable design in this college, and the university is interested in sustainable design in all its buildings going forward," Engelbrecht said.
Some of the sustainable design features that will be featured in the project include a green roof and natural ventilation, Engelbrecht said. The purpose of both will be climate control, reducing the need to cool and heat the building.
RDG Planning & Design designed the facility and has brought on some of the leading firms in sustainable design, including the Weidt Group, which is known for their green roofs in the Chicago area, Engelbrecht said.
Engelbrecht said he hopes the College of Design building will become the first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certified building on campus.
"LEED is simply a way of nationally rating buildings on the basis of performance in various [energy efficiency] categories," Engelbrecht said. "What we are trying to do is get certified at the [platinum] level. We know that we can do it at the [basic level] silver."
If the building is certified at the platinum level as Engelbrecht hopes, it will become one the few buildings in the nation rated at that level.
Besides being a teaching device for design students interested in sustainable design, the addition will eliminate the need for first- and some second-year design students from having to have their studio space in the Armory.
Currently, design students must travel between buildings for different needs.
"The Armory is cool and all, but it'd be nice to be in the design building," said Dana Sorensen, junior in pre-architecture. "We wouldn't have to work over here and have separate lockers for each building, and I like the atmosphere [at design] more than the one over here."
Another advantage to having the first- and some second-year students at the design building would be that they would have access to resources not available at the Armory, such as the work shop in the basement of Design and perhaps, most importantly, access to experienced upper classmen.
The first year in the design program is hard, Engelbrecht said. It is for this reason that connection with former first-year students is important.
Engelbrecht said the new addition is "a club house for our first- and second-year students."
The construction on the new addition should begin in the fall 2007 semester and end by the spring semester of 2009 or 2010, Engelbrecht said.
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Viewing Comments 1 - 3 of 3
Brian Laskowski
posted 2/18/07 @ 9:18 PM CST
As a design alum it disappoints me that the new things and the highest priority tends to be dealt to the "nationally ranked" programs at the expense of space and quality of the pre-exisiting studios in the basement. (Continued…)
former alum
posted 4/12/07 @ 1:57 PM CST
worst. rendering. ever.
recovering architect alum
posted 4/13/07 @ 2:32 PM CST
I can't believe any self-respecting designer would post a rendering like this. this is terrible. if this is the quality of the imagery these people are doing, how bad is the design going to be??
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