Marvin Hall the University of Kansas Plan Drawings

The Marvin Hall addition will be used every bit a lecture room and commons area.

An outside rendering of The

Kansas University graduate educatee in architecture Michael McKay notches a 2-by-4 for the ceiling structure of an add-on to Marvin Hall being completed by McKay and others with the Studio 804 graduate architecture course, Thursday, April 24, 2014, at Marvin Hall.

A rendering of the lecture room inside The

The distance between architectural drawings and the reality of the new addition to Marvin Hall on the Kansas University campus is quickly closing.

With the essentials of its flooring, roof and walls in place, the building's main structure has taken shape behind the 105-twelvemonth-old Marvin and is getting more detailed every twenty-four hours.

"Information technology went up pretty quick," said Renee Brune, a KU chief's pupil in architecture and part of the squad building the addition. "The hardest part has merely been our time — trying to stay on top of everything."

The KU School of Architecture, Design and Planning'south Studio 804 has been at work since autumn building the $ii million extension to Marvin, dubbed "The Forum." It volition be Marvin's first lecture hall and eatables area.

Studio 804 takes students through every phase of the edifice procedure, from blueprint through structure, a phase that architects generally sacrifice to contractors and others.

The team laid the foundation presently before Christmas and and then had to wait out bad atmospheric condition and the state permitting process, all the while working on doorknobs, handrails and other blueprint features in the studio's shop.

"We've rallied since the slowdown in our early first with the bad weather," said Dan Rockhill, a KU distinguished professor of architecture and the director of Studio 804.

The Forum'south designs telephone call for free energy-saving features that as well complicate the edifice process. Two drinking glass walls will form the building's exterior facade. Together they will work to trap warm air that can be circulated through the walls to warm the edifice and can as well exist ushered out of the building to help cool information technology in warmer weather.

Moveable panels, or louvers, within the glass walls will permit in or shut out sunlight, depending on the temperature and season. Even sohoped-for-planted vegetation underneath the structure, which juts out from Marvin'southward second floor, will help cool the air circulating in the ventilation system.

These design features are relatively rare in Midwestern buildings, and they're not easy to build, or they might exist more common.

The interior glass walls went in recently. Studio 804 members had to maneuver more sixty drinking glass panes, weighing up to 360 pounds, into place using levers with large suction cups on the ends. "I didn't realize how hard it was going to be to install the drinking glass," Brune said. "We did information technology on our own. We didn't have contractors."

Rockhill said the team is on pace to finish on time. The Forum is set up to open up for the fall semester. The construction period volition carry through graduation, when many of the Studio 804 students would otherwise be leaving. But a majority of the students have signed on to stay through July.

"What'south surprised me was the turnaround in the commitment" to the projection, Rockhill said. "A couple months agone information technology was kind of difficult to become everybody to empathize the enormousness of what was ahead of us."

With the project taking shape, that's changed, Rockhill said. The students' willingness to stay on to see information technology through is "a testimonial to their commitment."

Every bit they head into the home stretch, that delivery will exist crucial. There'south plenty building left to build. "I know we're going to finish eventually, but information technology seems and so far away still," Brune said.

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Source: https://www2.ljworld.com/news/2014/apr/26/marvin-addition-taking-shape-set-open-fall/