CU's new $34 million ATLAS Center blends high-tech highlights with LEED-standard features

The ATLAS Center is one of the University of Colorado's first new buildings that will seek LEED gold certification; the other, the Wolf Law Building, also debuted last month on the Boulder campus.

By Diana Murphy

Photo by Casey A. Cass/University of Colorado

Just in time for the start of the fall semester, construction finished last month on the new ATLAS Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The $34 million facility incorporates high-tech highlights and cutting-edge sustainable design features with a facade that speaks to the Tuscan vernacular that dominates the campus.

The center is one of two newly finished buildings at CU's Boulder campus designed and constructed to attain LEED gold certification. Work on the $46 million Wolf Law Building also finished in August, said CU facilities planner Philip Simpson Jr., AIA. (The University Memorial Center, renovated in 2002, was awarded LEED silver certification in June under a program for existing buildings.)

The push for the "green" facilities represents a significant change in the way the university builds, said DTJ Design Project Architect Len Segel, who worked on the ATLAS Center with Communication Arts' Mike Doyle, the lead designer.

"It's a big shift in their policies," Segel said. "A significant amount of funds raised [for the new building projects] came from student fees that carried the mandate that the buildings would have to be LEED certified."

Postage Stamp Site

Ground was broken on the ATLAS Center less than two years ago at the site of the former Hunter Science Building, northeast of the University Memorial Center at the center of the Boulder campus.

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"We started in January 2005, and the first day of classes [were] Aug. 28," said Rick Andrews, senior project manager for PCL Construction Services, the general contractor. "We'd liked to have had more cushion, but overall I think we've been able to accommodate a lot of changes from the owner and still maintain roughly the same schedule."

One of the biggest obstacles construction crew members faced revolved around the site, small and surrounded by some of the campus' busiest walkways. Mitigating the public's exposure was a prime concern.

"It's a very landlocked site, but I think at the end of the day we were successful in building a jewel box on a postage stamp," Andrews said.

Building to LEED gold standards, which call for onsite recycling, also created a challenge.

"Once you grasp the concept, it's easily taken care of, but there are costs associated with it," Andrews said.

For example, instead of dumping all construction waste, crews sorted the trash into recycling bins designated for wood, steel and plastic. The result: approximately 76 percent of all trash was recycled.

"Generally, you just take trash out of the building, throw it in a Dumpster and move on, so that's a cost right there," Andrews said.

Of the ATLAS Center's $34 million estimated cost, $1.6 million was provided by the state of Colorado and about $21 million funded by student fees. The rest was covered by private donations and federal funds.

The student fees that made the construction possible will begin this fall and increase from $100 a year to $400 a year over a four-year period. The new fee, which replace state funding, will be assessed for 20 years and fund other campus projects, including the law school.

A Technology Beacon

ATLAS - short for the Alliance for Teaching, Learning and Society - is a campus-wide institute that integrates information technology with multidisciplinary curricular, research and outreach programs.

"The ATLAS Center will serve as the technology beacon for the CU-Boulder campus," said Bobby Schnabel, vice provost for Academic and Campus Technology and faculty director of ATLAS. "We look forward to the teaching and learning facilities that it will offer to the more than 6,000 students from a multitude of disciplines who will take courses in this center each semester."

Befitting this role, the 66,000-gross-sq-ft building features a beacon-like lighted tower situated on the northeast corner as its most prominent architectural feature.

"This tower element is very much an Italian-style notion that fits into the language of the buildings already in existence at the University of Colorado," Segel said.

As such, the bell tower features zig-zagged dichroic glass, a high-tech material that refracts light the way a prism splits rainbow colors.

"As you walk along, you see the colors shift in a diamond pattern," Segel said.

At night, light and images can be projected onto an inverted pyramid reflector at the top of the tower.

"Students can program the lighting, the coloration, how it might change and even project digital images directly from computers," Segel said. "With that level of quality and clarity, students will be able to do a lot so [the tower is] not only decorative but also educational and informational."

Segel called the ATLAS Center "an unusual, special institute that's second to none in the state. It's this amazing program that's a resource center for every department at the university."

Because of that, "they wanted the building to have an appearance that communicated the high level of technology inside," he said. "We wanted the building to kind of feel like it had a buzz about it, an audible or visible buzz."

Enhanced Learning Center

Inside, the facility is every bit as high-tech as its signature tower.

The center - with three floors above ground and two below - houses technology-enhanced teaching, learning and research facilities for students, faculty and community members, including:

• A two-story "black-box" performance studio with video and audio control rooms, dressing rooms and a smaller production studio;
• One 150-student auditorium and one 75-student film screening room for instruction and campus and community events;
• Two 40-student and two 25-student computer classrooms;
• One 25-student teaching demonstration room;
• 11 student group design and group project spaces;
• A main floor exhibition lobby featuring a video wall, media projection and student project kiosks, all open to the public; and
• The Post-Modem Café, open to the public.

The center will also house the ATLAS Institute, including its 230-student Technology, Arts and Media program and its Evaluation and Research Group; the core offices of the National Center for Women and Information Technology; faculty and staff offices for the department of film studies; a student computing commons, editing rooms and production spaces; and the Faculty Teaching Excellence Program and Graduate Teacher Program.

"It is incredible," Segel said.

All that technological wizardry didn't come without a price.

"This is a very high-tech building and because it's so intense, cost is skewed a little as far as the value of [mechanical and electrical] contracts," Andrews said. "Maybe not so much the mechanical, but it was perhaps 5 percent more than you would normally expect to see."

But the added expense was well worth it.

"The building is beautiful, and we're just so proud of it," Andrews said. "CU is a demanding client, but not a difficult one, and this has been such a good experience overall."

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