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Updated 10:45 AM January 4, 2007

Regents approve North Quad design

By Nancy Connell
News Service

Interactive, inventive, immediate and global.

These are the characteristics students will experience in the new North Quad living/learning complex, whose schematic design was approved Dec. 15 by the U-M Board of Regents.

Combining sophisticated classroom and academic space with residence space for 460 students, the North Quad Residential and Academic Complex will provide classrooms, studios and offices for five information and communications-related university programs. The result will be an environment in which lively interactions among students and faculty spill seamlessly from classrooms to hallways to faculty offices to living quarters—all under the same roof.

The architectural team of Einhorn Yaffee Prescott (EYP) and Robert A.M. Stern Architects created a design that draws on the classic features of academic architecture. On the ground level, the brick and stone building encloses one continuous interior. Above ground, the complex appears as two separate buildings, an L-shaped, seven-story academic tower and a 10-story residential tower arranged around interlocking courtyards, and connected by a cloister evocative of the Law Quad.

“We envision this space as a new gateway and magnet for the rest of campus—an energized, innovative, always-active center close to the heart of downtown Ann Arbor,” said U-M President Mary Sue Coleman.

Demolition and site preparation work is scheduled to begin this winter on the $175 million, 360,000-square-foot project. Construction will be phased with completion expected by the summer of 2010.

The current design was undertaken and the project budget increased after University leadership and the regents introduced a new goal in March 2006 to create a signature building appropriate for the project’s prominent location at a gateway to central campus. Stern was added as lead designer while the project architect, Einhorn Yaffee Prescott maintains its role as architect of record. The increased project cost can be attributed to the one-year extension to the schedule to allow for redesign, additional architectural fees and the increased quality of the exterior building design and materials.

The complex

Information, communication and media are major themes for the units that will occupy the academic tower, which will face Washington and State streets. Entities housed in the facility include the Department of Screen Arts and Cultures, the Department of Communication Studies, the Language Resource Center and the Sweetland Writing Center, all components of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA), and it will house the School of Information, enabling SI to bring all its faculty together in the new building. The building will house three TV studios, a Media Gateway, a cyber cafe, media intensive classrooms and research areas, exhibit space, as well as faculty offices, academic administration space, and graduate student workspace.

The Media Gateway will be located in central areas of the lower two floors and will incorporate small team spaces, individual work stations and larger gathering spaces. Classrooms will do double duty as meeting rooms in the evenings when not in use for instruction.

As the University’s first new residence hall to be constructed in nearly 40 years, the living portions of the complex will offer housing not found in any other facility on campus, said E. Royster Harper, vice president of student affairs.

“The living spaces, like the whole of the project, were designed to facilitate student learning, and student social and programmatic needs,” Harper said. “The housing space is designed to offer students the features they desire, while working toward the goal of enhancing the connection between living and learning, and ensuring that residence hall students have an excellent, well-equipped, secure environment for personal and intellectual growth.”

The residence hall will offer two configurations: suites containing two double rooms and a living room and bath, and arrangements of four single rooms sharing a bath. Each residence hall floor houses lounges and cozies. The building also will offer a community learning center with additional small group study areas. The residence design is informed by the work of the Residence Life Initiative, a presidential task force that defined a U-M community of the future that co-locates living space, classrooms and public gathering spaces across campus to create neighborhoods built on the premise that learning and discovery occur everywhere. The RLI envisions residential life that fully and imaginatively connects academic and residential life; encourages personal and intellectual development; and promotes engagement in the broader community.

A double-height dining hall, accommodating about 180, will be located in a low-rise portion of the academic tower, with views to the outdoor space adjacent to Rackham Auditorium, the central plaza and Washington Street. An image cafe will offer coffee and snacks in an interactive media environment.

“Our design for North Quad reinforces the unique architectural and planning traditions of the Ann Arbor campus, with massing and forms based on the very special blend of Collegiate Gothic and the Arts & Crafts which uniquely identify the campus,” said Robert Stern, lead design architect for the project. “Working in the first half of the 20th century, architects Emil Lorch, Pond & Pond, and Albert Kahn designed such buildings as the Union, the League and Lorch Hall, creating a rich tapestry of deep red brick, stone and slate to shape arcades of flattened arches, grand engaged colonnades and landmark towers. Just as we did in designing Weill Hall (2006), which now constitutes the southern gateway to the main campus, we looked to this tradition as we approached the design of the North Quad in order to shape a new university environment where living, learning and academic support will coexist on a full-block anchoring the northwest corner of the main campus.”

Stern noted that welcoming plazas at the northwest and southeast corners of the block open up the quad to its surroundings while a café and gallery spaces to the west pick up the retail rhythm of State Street. Along Huron Street, the preserved facade of the Carnegie Library is incorporated into the residential building. At the corner of State and Huron Streets, a broad plaza welcomes the community to the campus. The North Quad buildings rise in a counterclockwise spiral from the dining hall, with large bay windows overlooking Rackham Green, to the boldly shaped tower at the southeast plaza, visible from as far away as the Diag.

Academic vision

Media and information technology are subjects of intense interest among students, says Terrence J. McDonald, dean of LSA.

“Today’s students expect much more,” McDonald said. “They expect an interactive experience, an expert teacher who can be a coach and a partner. We’re making the transition to the world of active learning where a technologically enabled classroom challenges and enriches the roles of faculty and students. The new complex will combine lecture rooms and labs, and be filled with the latest technological advances, so lectures can be broken up with more interactive presentations and exchanges, and students can share the experience with other students around the world.”

Dean of Information C. Olivia Frost said, “The School of Information (SI) is looking forward to new opportunities for intellectual engagement with our North Quad academic colleagues, and the potential to work together on research and instruction to explore multimedia approaches to learning and literacy. While SI is currently a graduate school, we’re planning major undergraduate initiatives, and a facility that co-locates residential and academic activity offers a promising opportunity to see how living/learning is facilitated by technological innovations.

“The move to North Quad also is critical to our academic enterprise, in that the new building will bring together most of our school’s activities in one place. As a highly collaborative community with intellectual integration as part of our core mission, it is essential for our students, faculty and staff to be able to teach, learn and work in a single location.”

Student life

Carole Henry, assistant vice president for student affairs and director of University Housing, said considerable input into the design was gathered from students, who also will be asked for comment periodically as the project moves forward.

“The plan for the residential side of North Quad addresses many of the needs identified in the comprehensive Residential Life Initiatives research completed before we began any of our residence hall projects, and the specific input solicited from student housing leaders and others,” Henry said. “In particular, student reaction to the various areas for study, collaboration and socializing has been very positive.”

Regents approve North Quad design

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