On the Right Path Steel welcomes vibrant visitor center
By Mark Robins, Senior Editor The University of Texas at Dallas needed a visitor
center and university bookstore that could act as a visual gateway to the campus welcoming visitors, prospective students and alumni to the Richardson, Texas, campus. The space would be the origin for all campus tours, the source for visitor parking passes and the nexus of campus life. To create this beacon, the university reached out to the Dallas branch of the international archi- tectural fi rm, PageSoutherlandPage.
The new building consists of two intersecting
volumes with a common, connecting linear axis. The south volume containing the tenant spaces like the bookstore, coffee shop, visitor center and copy shop is wrapped in an opaque material while the north volume is a transparent box with large gathering spaces. The building’s most prominent feature is its steel rotunda.
RADIANT STEEL ROTUNDA The 35-foot-tall, steel and clipped-glass rotunda is the building’s front porch. It’s a 700-square-foot area of refuge, rest and congregation that welcomes visitors and students as they enter the campus from University Drive. “The rotunda’s unique appearance is created by a series of radiused steel tube frames which support the steel plate and pipe sunshades,” says Lindsey Leah Brigati, AIA, associate architect at PageSouth- erlandPage. “These concentric rings cantilever 6 feet from the tower’s steel pipe columns, increasing the overall shaded area of the space by 100 percent. The rotunda’s intricate steel detailing, simple materiality and drastic display of shadow and light transforms this building element into a jewel box. The rotunda is a constant hub of campus activity from early morn- ing to after dusk.” The rotunda is designed to be naturally condi-
tioned by a stack ventilation system. The moving air is circulated around the height of the tower by a 20-foot-diameter, low-energy fan from Lexington,
Ky.-based Big Ass Fans. A single-pane glass shell is attached to the steel armature with aluminum clips. The fan draws the warm air up to the top of the tower and pulls in cool air from below. At the top of the tower, the glass is replaced by bird netting. This allows air to move freely in and out of the space and prevents birds from entering the space. On a hot, Texas summer day, it can be 105 degrees outside and a cool 80 degrees inside the rotunda. During the winter, the fan is designed to operate at a low speed to gently push the warm air to the fl oor without causing a draft.
INNOVATIVE INTERIORS The interior of the two largest spaces, the bookstore and the reception room, is exposed steel and glass. The 22-foot-tall walls of glass allow for the building’s exterior sunshades to visually become an interior building element. The intricate detailing of the column-beam connections and light trays transforms the steel from ordinary building element into the interior design feature. All of the exposed steel,