Degenkolb designed a 65,000 square-foot $64 million academic building for the Law School. The project includes a three-story office building with three wings surrounding a central elevated garden terrace over law conference space and an architecturally exposed cast-in-place concrete Rotunda entry structure. The office building uses a special moment resisting frame system using the Conxtech moment connection, a unique connection that uses a steel forged collar around an HSS column to create a rigid moment connection with no field welding. The Rotunda structure is a cast-in-place concrete cylinder with an interior spiral staircase wrapping up the exterior wall. There is a third floor conference room that is suspended from the roof structure. Unique structural features include an attic spacing housing the mechanical equipment that also mocks the traditional tile mansard roofs found on campus, an expansive steel and wood framed trellis over the garden terrace, and slider connections between each office wing to provide for independent movement of the wings during an earthquake due to the torsionally irregular building shape. The design was documented in Revit and the structural model was used in 3D coordination by the design-build MEP contractors for clash detection.

Features:

• First use of ConXtech moment frame system at an academic institute
• Attic space for the mechanical equipment
• Garden terrace

Benefits:

• Clash detection using 3D construction; first-time use on campus

Photos courtesy of Aislinn Weidele, Ennead Architects