Project Details
- Project Name
- John W. Olver Design Building
- Architect
- Leers Weinzapfel Associates
- Client/Owner
- University of Massachusetts - Amherst
- Project Types
- Education
- Project Scope
- New Construction
- Size
- 87,573 sq. feet
- Year Completed
- 2017
- Awards
- 2023 AIA - National Awards
- Shared by
- Andrea Timpano
- Team
-
Andrea Leers, Principal-in-Charge
Tom Chung, Design Principal
- Certifications & Designations
- LEED Gold (targeted)
- Project Status
- Built
- Cost
- $37,000,000
This project was selected as a winner in AIA's 2023 Architecture Awards. It was featured in the May/June 2023 issue of ARCHITECT.
Western Massachusetts, with its rolling hills, expansive forests, and pastoral landscapes, offers a beautiful setting for a college. What better way to showcase this idyllic backdrop than by designing a building around it?
The John W. Olver Design Building at the University of Massachusetts Amherst nods to the university’s roots as a land-grant college while drawing a clear connection to the present. Designed by Boston-based Leers Weinzapfel Associates and constructed entirely from wood, the LEED Gold–certified building brings together three design departments: architecture, building and construction technology, and landscape architecture. Housing these previously separated disciplines under one roof encourages collaboration, whether that’s over a cup of coffee in the commons beneath dramatic, exposed timber cross-bracing or through a quick conversation as students cross paths on their way down the cross-laminated-timber staircase between classes. The rooftop courtyard, an oasis of wild-harvest sod, bare-root plants, and young evergreens, also offers ample mingling opportunities (and scenic views) while serving as an open-air classroom for the landscape architecture program.
Expanded coverage of the 2020 COTE Top 10 Awards appeared in the October 2020 issue of ARCHITECT.
By Katie Gerfen
Using new and new-to-them sustainable materials and holistic design strategies, the project team created a building that integrates seamlessly into the campus and connects the users within it.
How were sustainable strategies integrated into your design process?
Andrea Leers, FAIA, principal: Prior to our becoming involved, the schools of architecture, landscape architecture and regional planning, and building construction technology gathered to create a mission statement, the central focus of which was a commitment to sustainable design. They brought that to us as their value, and it was a good match with ours.
Josiah Stevenson, FAIA, principal: In our office we have a strong green group—because we’re in Boston, we call it the Green Monsters—so there’s great interest. That said, this was very much client driven. The building construction technology school does a lot of testing on wood structures, and they specifically asked if it could be a wood building. We had never done one before, but we embraced it.
This project focuses on bringing together schools, teams, and systems. How did that drive the design?
Leers: Our beginning principle was about the integration of this facility into the campus. The site connects the higher topography of housing and the lower topography of academic buildings, so the landscape was thought to pass through our building and to create a passage for the whole campus.
Tom Chung, FAIA, principal: There’s a real integration of form and program, which worked relative to the site and the solar orientation. The courtyard allowed us to bring daylight and views into the middle of the building, which is an amalgam of different types of program spaces. We were thinking carefully about this when we were designing the envelope; we concentrated large studio spaces facing north with large openings, and offices on the south side with smaller openings, which worked well to reduce heat gain.
Are there sustainable systems that you used for the first time here?
Jeffrey Fishbein, AIA, senior associate: We incorporated not just wood and mass timber, but an innovative composite CLT slab system that hadn’t been used much in the United States. We also started design at a time when we were moving away from a formalist approach to architecture and toward performance-driven design—even when we were looking at different partis at the beginning, we did energy analysis to evaluate passive options for each.
Ashley Rao, AIA, associate: Following that approach through the entire course of the design, through the metering and verification process when you’re comparing your early assumptions to how things actually performed in the buildings was a learning curve as well. We have a vibrant, sustainable practice, and this was a new step.
Metrics Snapshot:
INTEGRATION
Bringing together the previously dispersed departments of architecture, building construction technology, and landscape architecture and regional planning, the building fosters collaboration. Its LEED Gold certification exemplifies the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s commitment to sustainable design. An integrated approach to sustainability maximizes the impact of passive design while incorporating strategic engineering solutions to minimize energy use. As the largest cross-laminated timber academic building in the country, it demonstrates the sustainability, economy, and beauty of mass timber. The surrounding landscape and roof garden restore a visibly functioning ecosystem, creating an outdoor classroom for detailing, site engineering, plant ecology, soil science, and stormwater management. For students, the building is a teaching tool, demonstrating the power of design that expressively integrates structure, landscape, and architecture.
For a full list of metrics, visit aia.org.
PROJECT CREDITS
Project: John W. Olver Design Building, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, Mass.
Client/Owner: University of Massachusetts Building Authority
Architect: Leers Weinzapfel Associates Architects, Boston. Andrea Leers, FAIA, Josiah Stevenson, FAIA (principals); Tom Chung, FAIA, (project manager/design principal); Jeffrey Fishbein, AIA (project architect/ construction project manager); Irene Kang, AIA, Taehoon Lee, AIA, Juliet Chun, AIA, Zhanina Boyadzhieva, AIA, Carolina Gutierrez (designers)
Architect of Record: Leers Weinzapfel Associates Architects
Interior Designer: Leers Weinzapfel Associates Architects
Structural Engineer: Equilibrium Consulting, Vancouver
Structural Engineer of Record: Simpson Gumpertz &Heger
M/E/P Engineer: BVH Integrated Services
Civil Engineer: Nitsch Engineering, Inc.
Geotechnical Engineer: GZA GeoEnvironmental
Construction Manager: Suffolk
Landscape Architect: Stephen Stimson Landscape Architects
Lighting Designer: Atelier Ten
Sustainability Consultant: Atelier Ten
MATERIALS AND SOURCES
Acoustical System: Armstrong Panel Ceilings
Ceilings: Rulon International
Exterior Wall Systems: Dri-Design Aluminum Rainscreen
Glass: View, Inc. Dynamic Glass
Structural System: Nordic Structures (Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT), Glulam)
Windows/Curtainwalls/Doors: Kawneer (Aluminum Curtainwall)
Project Description
This project is a winner of a 2020 AIA COTE Top Ten Award.
From the AIA:
Bringing together the previously dispersed Departments of Architecture, Building Construction Technology, and Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning, the John W. Olver Design Building fosters multidisciplinary collaboration and expressively integrates construction, landscape architecture, and building technology. It exemplifies the University of Massachusetts’ commitment to sustainable and innovative design with its LEED Gold certification and demonstration of emerging wood construction technologies.
John W. Olver Design Building
Architect: Leers Weinzapfel Associates
Owner: University of Massachusetts Building Authority
Location: Amherst, Massachusetts
Project site: Previously developed land
Building program type(s): Education – College/University (campus-level)
Bringing together the previously dispersed Departments of Architecture, Building Construction Technology, and Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning, the John W. Olver Design Building fosters multidisciplinary collaboration and expressively integrates construction, landscape architecture, and building technology. It exemplifies the University of Massachusetts’ commitment to sustainable and innovative design with its LEED Gold certification and demonstration of emerging wood construction technologies.
An integrated approach to sustainability maximizes the impact of passive design, while incorporating strategic engineering solutions to minimize energy use. Addressing not only operational energy use, but also reducing the embodied energy of the building itself, the Olver building features an innovative use of engineered timber structure. The largest cross-laminated timber (CLT) academic building in the United States, the Olver building demonstrates the sustainability, economy, and beauty of mass timber as a building material and renewable resource.
The Olver building occupies a pivotal site on the Amherst campus and brings the community into "the commons" where students and faculty gather for organized and informal activity. The well-lit space offers visual connection to studios and maker spaces, embracing the university's collaborative goals. The surrounding landscape and roof garden restore a visibly functioning ecosystem, creating an outdoor classroom for detailing, site engineering, plant ecology, soil science, and stormwater management.
For students using the spaces, the building itself is both a learning environment and a teaching tool, demonstrating the simplicity, power, and beauty of design that expressively integrates structure, landscape, and architecture.
FROM THE ARCHITECTS:
Leers Weinzapfel Associates recently completed the Design Building at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the first Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) academic building in the US and the largest installation of wood concrete composites in North America. The $52M, 87,500-square-foot project, made possible through supplemental funding from the Massachusetts State Legislature, is a dynamic space of exchange, collaboration, and experiment. Uniting the university’s departments of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, and the Building and Construction Technology program under one roof for the first time, the structure itself is a teaching tool for prescient sustainable design.
The building is organized around a skylit central commons that brings students together for lectures, exhibits, presentations, and informal gatherings. Studios, maker spaces and classrooms surround the central space that opens onto the street as a showcase for the design disciplines. The commons is capped by a green roof that comprises an outdoor learning environment and experimental space for the landscape department.
A demonstration of the construction process itself, columns and beams of glue-laminated wood, a floor of composite, exposed cross laminated timber plank and cast in place concrete, and the lobby’s “zipper truss” (developed in consultation with Equilibrium Consulting) all exemplify innovative timber engineering.
The building’s highly-efficient envelope of copper-colored, anodized aluminum panels and vertical windows suggests the colors and patterns of the region’s forests and trees. Surrounding landscaping by STIMSON makes extensive use of native plants and paving materials. Dedicated mechanical equipment is zoned for optimal efficiency, and extensive glazing and skylights provide maximum daylight to the building’s interior, reducing the need for artificial lighting. Storm water management directs roof runoff to a “spring source” at the top of the site, filtering the water through bio-swales and timber dams to the site’s lower end and back to the Connecticut River. Suffolk was construction manager for the project, which is targeting LEED Gold certification.
“We imagined this building as a teaching tool for the design disciplines,” says Leers Weinzapfel Principal Andrea Leers, FAIA. “I know from my own teaching experience that there’s nothing more potent than being able to talk with students about the space around you—in this case, the building’s collaborative configuration, innovative structure, considered material and detailing choices, environmentally-driven site, and synergistic landscape concepts that define the project.”
“The Design Building is an extraordinary mixing bowl for the disciplines that focus on the design of the built environment,” says Steve Schreiber, FAIA, professor and chair, UMass Amherst Department of Architecture. “Students and faculty alike now productively collaborate in the beautiful light-filled common areas, studios, shops, and seminar rooms. Positioned in the center of campus, the building is a critical link in the university’s arts necklace”
