Stay True to Your Roots: Reimagining a Mid-Century Student Center

Phase One.

The first thing we tackled was the theater renovation, transforming the non-accessible, tiered seating into a flexible space that can host concerts, theater performances, and film screenings, among other things. In short, we hope to create a space for students to mingle and display their creativity. This is when we encountered our first challenge: the mid-century building’s envelope was a cast-in-place concrete skin with little interior insulation. How could we preserve the beautifully-crafted formwork of the concrete while enhancing the envelope performance? Poor insulation is a staple of mid-century buildings, so this was not a surprise to us. We devised a plan to insulate from the inside and replace the single pane windows. Most important was being able to improve performance while keeping the building’s heritage in mind.

We also looked at original photography, much of which came from Karen McCormick, a witness to the building’s original opening and someone who has worked in the building ever since. She’s now assistant to the Student Center Director and is in charge of special projects like ours. Thanks to Karen’s vast collection of photographs, we could travel back in time, “witness” events in black and white, and understand the building’s Land-Grant heritage and the role it played in shaping the life of students through decades of use. The Lory Student Center was indeed the Campus’ Living Room!

Phase Two.

While the theater renovation was under way, we began working on Phase 2, the main building. We intensely studied original documents like drawings, finding any clue we could use to reconstruct the spirit of the initial building’s glory. In that quest, we discovered plenty: a design responsive to natural ventilation, envelope screens that mitigated solar heat gain, interior wood screens that gracefully divided interior spaces, and an array of original artwork, most of it still intact. Some of that work included colorful mosaic walls that popped against the simplicity of the interior, an exterior fountain with the University mascot ram’s head water spouts, and a stained-glass clerestory that bathed the interior with a rainbow-like lighting effect.