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Bennington College Student Center
Plaza Building
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Architects collaborate with university faculty and students on a sustainable campus plaza.
The Brock University vice president, facilities manager, students, and faculty took part in the design process to create a building that would provide an aesthetic identity for the campus, with minimal effects on the environment. On-going workshops with Brock University enabled the architects to align their design with the vision of those who would eventually utilize the building’s campus store, academic space, and research facility.
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The result is Plaza Building, a five-story, 86,000-square-foot building situated along the edge of the Niagara Escarpment. The building completes an open courtyard campus quadrangle.
The north facade is a glazed, three-story circulation area that overlooks the quad. This day-lit space, with two generous stairs, a ramp, and a 200-foot limestone bench, provides a place to see and be seen, to interact, socialize, and study. Parallel to the north facade are three stories of classroom space, enclosed in acoustically treated cherry wood box. Situated behind the classrooms are faculty offices along the building’s south end.
This south elevation has a copper and glass skin that distinguishes it from the east and west stone facades and the glazed north front. These copper panels are shaped to shade the building in the summer and direct diffused light indoors.
The use of Niagara Escarpment limestone for both interior and exterior finishes not only connects the project to its site, but also offered the sustainable advantages of a locally produced material. The concrete structure, with its high thermal mass, is an integral part of the heating and cooling strategy. The building achieved LEED Silver certification.
Formal name of project: Plaza Building
Location: St. Catharines, Ontario
Gross square footage: 86,000 sq.ft.
Completion Date: September 2007
Total construction cost: 22 million
Architect:
MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects Limited
2188 Gottingen Street
Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada B3K 3B4
P: 902-429-1867
F: 902-429-6276
www.mlsarchitects.ca
Rounthwaite Dick & Hadley Architects Inc.
225 Richmond Street West Suite 201
Toronto, Ontario
M5V 1W2
t: 416-204-1399
F: 416-204-1321
www.rdharch.com
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