PORTLAND, Ore.—Lewis & Clark College opened three, new state-of-the-art, apartment-style residence halls in September that offer a model for the next generation of campus housing.
The residence halls are already attracting attention at national conferences for their high-quality design and for their sensitivity to the environment.
“They are changing the face of our campus pretty significantly,” said Anne Wachsler, project manager at Lewis & Clark.
Lewis & Clark Trustee Joan Smith describes the project as “a dream come true.” Students say the same thing.
Designed to respond to the natural environment of Palatine Hill and constructed with sustainable materials, the buildings are the first residence halls in the nation to be registered for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. Certification is pending review by the U.S. Green Building Council.
“The new Lewis & Clark residence halls will set the standard for environmentally-responsible campus housing,” says John Echlin, principal at SERA Architects.
“The new residence halls are already changing the culture of our campus by providing privacy, autonomy, and state-of-the-art accommodations for our junior and senior students,” says Jon Eldridge, dean of students.
The college built the three apartment-style halls to encourage juniors and seniors to live on campus. First- and second-year students are required to live on campus, which left only 125 of the previous1,000 beds for juniors and seniors.
“We want juniors and seniors to be fully engaged in campus life, instead of treating their education as a job to be left at the end of the day,” said Provost Jane Atkinson. “We believed more students would choose to reside on campus if we provided the type of living arrangements older students leave campus to acquire.”
Students proved her right. More than 300 students eagerly signed up for the 168 beds in the three new residence halls. Each hall houses 56 students in apartment-style living environments. Each self-contained apartment has either four or two single-occupancy sleeping rooms with a kitchen, bathroom, living area and data ports in every room.
“My roommate, senior Lindsey Ivie, and I appreciate the privacy that is created by the new apartments,” says senior Elizabeth Larter, who served on a board of trustee committee on residence life. Having individual bedrooms with our own kitchen/living room is great! It provides students with more privacy as well as a greater sense of independence—which is needed for upper-division students.”
The centerpiece of each house is a two-story lounge, evoking the character of a small lodge, featuring a fireplace and exposed trusses. The lounge and balcony can accommodate all residents for house meetings and yet provide a cozy space to study or to watch television. Large windows will flood the area with natural light.
The design involved lots of student input. Students served on a board of trustees committee. They expressed their opinions on a special Web site. And they tried out modular furniture set up in a model room and voted on their favorites.
"Arguably, Lewis & Clark has taken new dorm design furthest by involving the students at every stage of its development," wrote Randy Gragg in the Sept. 26 issue of The Oregonian.
"The resulting buildings are laid out like a European hill town," Gragg notes. "Carefully carved out of the campus's forested hillside, the dorms feature large windows in the unites. But by flaring the hallways like funnels with widows at the wider end, natural light and views of tees also transform what in most dorms would be a dreary corridor of doors."
Echlin of SERA Architects, who worked in Europe for several years, was inspired by Italian hilltowns in designing the buildings as an “academic village” for Lewis & Clark. The village includes a dynamic plaza, a clock tower, patios, café, convenience store, copy center, recreation center, green space and basketball court.
“You’ll find that housing on most campuses is fairly generic,” says Echlin. “Colleges and universities often house hundreds of students in one high-volume, low-budget building with long, narrow, dark halls and little privacy or space to socialize.
“Our goal was to design space that promotes both privacy and community,” he says. “That’s what’s lacking in so many residence halls, and that’s what upper-division students tell us they want. Hallways are wide because students indicated they like to socialize in the halls.
“We broke the housing mass into smaller components to make them feel like a “village.” Each building houses from 56 to 60 students. We designed the halls to feel both like “home” and part of the natural environment,” Echlin says. “We varied the appearance to give each hall its own individual character. We didn’t want cookie-cutter buildings.”
The buildings range in size from 21,000 to 23,000 square feet with total square footage of 75,000 feet.
The college is financing the $22 million cost of the buildings through rental fees and private donations. Maggie's Café is named to honor Maggie Murdy for her generous gift. Roberts Hall honors her father, the Rev. Harold Roberts, and her mother, Gertrude Roberts.
SERA worked closely with Walker/Macy Landscape Architects to retain existing trees and incorporate accessibility for the disability while working with a challenging topography that entailed a 50-foot change in elevation. The landscape design incorporates all-native, drought-tolerant vegetation, furthering the environmental goals of the project. The general contractor was DPR construction.
“The landscaping and the buildings are beautiful,” says Larter. “The complex feels nature—like it was meant to be here. The halls don’t stick out like a sore thumb.
“I know recent alums who are amazed and jealous that they did not get the opportunity to live in the new apartments,” she added.
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Worth noting:
• The new residence halls generated significant interest at the Association for Higher Education Facility Officers conference and at the Society for College and University Planners.
• Lewis & Clark College received a green grant for the project because of the energy efficiency of the buildings and the use of sustainable products.
• The American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment (AIACOTE) invited SERA Architects to exhibit the Lewis & Clark residence hall project at What Makes It Green, the organization’s third annual Earth Day Conference in Seattle. |
