atrium – CSO

Lacy School of Business

The design features innovative spaces for experiential learning, including: flexible classrooms where local professionals teach workplace-style classes, centers staffed by organizations that involve students in research and outreach, and collaborative workspaces where students develop their own business in concert with experts from the region. The building represents Butler’s competitive distinction from its peer institutions by making activities and interaction immediately visible and central to students’ experience. The design provides visibility by creating transparent spaces that invite participation in central locations around the multi-story atrium at the heart of the building. In addition, the central, broad, open stairs and generous balconies encourage creative collisions as students, faculty, and visitors move and interact throughout the building.

The Innovation Commons, which opens onto the central atrium, is equipped for students to start and run their own businesses as well as a wide range of other types of experiential learning. The Centers, distributed around the main level, provide space where business professionals, faculty, and students work together to solve business challenges. Glass overhead doors open to connect to the atrium and convey the importance and vitality of that work to the school and its guests.

The Butler Business School is named in honor of Andre B. Lacy, a local, successful entrepreneur and philanthropist, as well as a committed family man and daring adventurer. CSO’s interior design studio honored his life with a series of installations that incorporate a collection of custom-designed icons representing his many facets. The icons appear throughout the building as design elements in areas such as the rug in the main atrium and small medallions that are hidden throughout the building. A timeline of his life takes the form of 25 envelopes, connecting his first job in a mailroom and the endowment gift, reminding students that their humble beginnings can build to something great. The design team also featured objects that were important to Lacy – the time clock Lacy once used to clock into his job and the motorcycle he rode across continents. These were both gifts from the family who were intimate collaborators on the project. The conference table in the board room adjacent to the Dean’s office features the Lacy family knot and is a duplication of a table that exists at Lacy’s corporate headquarters.

Located in a prominent place on the campus, visible from the east entrance, the building completes the cross axis of the original campus masterplan. The building’s vertical towers and active silhouette reflect the characteristics of the much-loved historic campus. The building replaces a parking lot and defines the intersection of the two major green spaces at the center of the campus. CSO completed this project in collaboration with Goody Clancy.

Cathedral High School Innovation Center

The Innovation Center strengthens the school’s commitment to a flexible and focused learning environment, emphasizing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Learning Studios. The facility’s design encourages and promotes a collaborative experience in all of the learning spaces, and provides a more open, group-oriented Science area, de-emphasizing compartmentalized education and promoting group and team learning across several disciplines. The open Science area includes several laboratories in the same space allowing a more efficient teaching model, while providing enhanced interaction.

An informal study area and open faculty areas promote additional interaction among faculty and students. The proximity and accessibility of the faculty is purposeful. However, break out rooms and small group rooms support one-on-one meetings or private conversations. The learning spaces are intentionally transparent as well as flexible in order to adapt to the changing use of the space and the continued connection to the learning environments.

The Innovation Center also contains the relocated dining and kitchen space in the lower level, allowing students a more flexible approach to food service and more options to the traditional lunch period. An additional Café allows students to utilize a “grab-n-go” concept during the day. The relocation of the campus cafeteria creates a destination for students during the course of the day, while also creating informal interaction areas in the adjacent spaces. Additionally, a new Cathedral Spirit Shop is located near the cafeteria in a prominent location for both students and visiting parents/alumni.

Architecturally, The Innovation Center creates a new “front door” to campus. The center is an addition to Kelly Hall on the courtyard between the existing Student Life Center (SLC) and Loretta Hall. The new addition incorporates a three-story open atrium between the old Kelly Hall and the architecture of the new addition. Exterior materials used on the addition are blonde brick (same used on SLC), glass, metal panel and stone veneer panels. The old limestone façade of Kelly Hall will be preserved and will be the feature of the new, glass-enclosed front entrance.

Allied Solutions Corporate Headquarters

CSO designers conducted extensive visioning sessions with focus groups from Allied Solutions to guide and inspire the design for their new headquarters. The Allied Solutions team had the following to say about the visioning process: “When you ask employees what they want in a new space, they are limited to envisioning only the environments in which they have personally experienced. The Visioning exercise developed by CSO draws out attitudes and ideas that employees otherwise would not be able to voice when asked, ‘what do you want in your space?’ This was a key part in the overall design strategy for Allied Solutions’ new headquarters, allowing our employees to voice their unique input for the company’s new space.”

The holistic interior design, and seamlessly incorporated branding elements are apparent immediately upon arrival to Allied’s second floor lobby. There, employees and visitors are enveloped by Allied Solutions’ “Blue Culture” with views to an atrium with a grand staircase, an informal mid-level conference room, social gathering spaces, and a 3^rd level conference room. By design, the activity of the office is put on display in response to feedback provided by the user groups during their visioning sessions. Research and careful dissection of information from the visioning sessions gave designers the opportunity to carefully parallel Allied Solution’s unique culture in its interior environment. The result is a unique space that embodies the company’s cultural and business aspirations.

Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall

When Indiana University set out to improve the iconic Assembly Hall, they prioritized the preservation of the original aesthetic while challenging the design team to develop a bold, yet respectful expansion that closely aligned with the architectural character of the original structure. Contextual influences drove a design solution that integrated the new addition into the existing structure holistically with a reverent architectural expression that closely relates to the original.

A new atrium space allows views between the entry and main concourse. This is the center of the new space and features a reinvented version of Athlete’s Hall and a panoramic window allowing views into the arena. The new arrival area supports existing traditions while offering a space for new traditions, events, and ceremonies to take place. The new entry is conveniently located, and visible escalators create a clear and efficient means for moving spectators through the space into the arena. A new Box Seat Club offers an exceptional viewing experience of events. CSO collaborated with SmithGroup to complete this project.

CSO subsequently completed the Roberts Family Indiana Basketball Team Center and Mark Cuban Center for Sports Technology located within Assembly Hall.

Roche Diagnostics Lab and Office

The objective for this 55,569 square foot, 2-story building addition was to bring together five related product testing laboratories into one unified setting for increased productivity and effectiveness. In order to address workflow requirements, the design is sited as an addition to an existing building but it is essentially a freestanding two-story structure. The program included product testing labs, various purpose-designed meeting spaces, social hub/interaction spaces, and a variety of flexible, concentrative and mobile work settings.

The program areas were layered vertically in the building to manage biohazard separations and controls, with the lab spaces on the first floor and the flexible work environments, meeting, and interaction areas located on the second floor for access to natural light. In order to promote interaction and a sense of community, the most public function – the social hub – is located adjacent to the main staircase, at the most centralized point in the circulation atrium. This convergence of circulation and social functions has proven to be very conducive to staff interaction.

In order to maximize natural light while adhering to sustainable design features, detailed 3-D models, sun path studies, building sections, and energy analysis models were developed and analyzed to inform the final design configuration of the west façade shading system and glazing. The design solution creates a carefully designed, glazed west-facing façade which allows very controlled, diffused natural daylight directly into the circulation atrium and deeply into the lab, office, and interaction spaces beyond.

The interior spaces were designed with extensive interior glazing to display the advanced laboratory technology and innovation that is central to Roche’s business success and corporate culture, as well as to allow for the deep penetration of natural light. The Design Team combined very clean, European modernist materials and furnishings with a warm palette of neutral hues and accent colors rooted in the native Indiana landscape.

As the result of the client’s tech-based culture and high design aspirations, the design team employed a rigorous, multidisciplinary, sustainable design approach to create an uplifting, technologically advanced facility that inspires its scientific staff and expresses its culture of scientific innovation.

HealthNow New York

Prominently located next to the New York Niagara Section Thruway on an abandoned brownfield site, the largest building in 20 years in Buffalo helped encourage economic development in the area. The design utilizes an 1859 stone façade to maintain historic preservation of the site’s past while incorporating a curved glass curtain wall. The curtain wall not only offers magnificent views of Lake Erie, but its southern exposure provides a valuable component of the building’s sustainable design.

The north, east, and west façades are a detailed colored architectural precast concrete with large window openings, recalling brick waterfront warehouses. The entry plaza reflects the shifted city grids of the waterfront and downtown. The building is set back from the thruway, allowing the site development of a landscaped “greenway”, and screening a 1,500-car employee parking structure with an enclosed employee pedestrian bridge connection.

Sustainable design features include the development of an urban brownfield site; the southern glass curtain wall with low-e glazing and sunscreens with motorized shades and light sensors for solar control, day lighting and views; energy efficient mechanical and electrical systems; and the use of “green” building materials and construction practices.

Seng-Liang Wang Hall

The 4-story, 147,000 square foot building is designed to house research and laboratory space for Purdue’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, as well as 22,000 square feet of commercially-leased retail space and 60,000 square feet of Class A office space. Its beautiful common areas include an open, light-filled 4-story atrium and indoor and outdoor gathering and seating areas.

The building received LEED New Construction Gold certification recognizing Wang Hall’s best-in-class “green” building strategies and practices. The building was completed on a sustainable project site and is located in a community setting within existing residential and commercial infrastructure. In addition, the building and site were designed to minimize the impact of urban heat islands on neighboring developments and habitats. The design is mindful of both water efficiency and energy efficiency, and was designed with low-flow and high-efficiency flush and flow fixtures to reduce potable water use within the building.