2018 ACUI Facility Design Award Submittal

Liberty University Montview Student Union

2018 ACUI

Facility Design Award Submission

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100 Word Summary The Montview Union at Liberty University (LU) is the proud keystone of an ambitious campus transformation focused on elevating Student Life on campus, and stands for the institution’s recast identity of excellence. The Union’s rich mix of uses complements academics with generous social spaces, key student services, and dining to forge a vital commons at the locus of the University community. The extroverted architectural focus of the Union fosters an atmosphere of welcome and transparency, where a hearth-like central atrium forum acts as a magnetic campus destination and a lantern-like beacon that frames the academic community within.

Project Name Liberty University – Montview Student Union Date of Completion August 2016 Building Type New College Union Buildings / $35M – $55M Architecture Firm Type VMDO Architects / Charlottesville, Virginia

Cover: Exterior of Montview Union (Credit: Alan Karchmer) Right: Atrium (Credit: Lincoln Barbour)

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Keystone of a Campus Transformation In 2010, Liberty University embarked upon an ambitious building campaign designed to dramatically recast the campus’ physical identity and transform the institution from an online educational engine to a comprehensive place-based residential campus, with a distinct focus on Student Life. In just 7 years the University has invested nearly $1 billion toward the quality of its student experience through a campus master plan. The new Montview Union is the keystone of the campus transformation, the flagship for LU’s key goal to elevate Student Life on campus and ignite recruitment and retention. As the new geographic center of gravity for Student Life, the Union is the beating heart of the institution’s identity of excellence.

The Montview Union is a gathering place for students, faculty, and student life professionals at the locus of the University community, where academic pursuits are complemented with cultural, social, and recreational services. Emblematic of the University and its mission, the Montview Union makes a place where meaningful relationships can be nurtured within a scholarly setting. Locating the Union at the center of a new Campus Walk, which links the entire spectrum of campus life, from recreation to residential areas, ensures the Union’s success in serving as a beacon of campus activity.

Left: Aerial Photograph of Demoss Center + Wing Buildings (Credit: Liberty University) Right: Campus Transformation : Montview Union as Keystone with Academic Lawn + Campus Walk (Credit: Liberty University)

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2010 Campus

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Demoss Center

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Music Wing

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Science Wing

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Dining

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Reber Thomas Dining Hall

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Hill Dorms

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Vines Center

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Circle Dorms

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East Campus Housing

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Campus Transformation

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12 Montview Student Union

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13 Academic Lawn 14 Landmark Tower

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15 Science Hall 16 Falwell Library

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17 School of Music + Concert Hall

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19 Lake

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20 Residential Commons 21 Bookstore 22 Visitor Center

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23 Basketball Practice Faculity 24 East Campus Parking Garage 25 Reber Thomas Garage 26 Softball

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Shifting Student Life to the Heart of Campus Liberty’s commitment to a student-centered pedestrian landscape sparked the elimination of poorly-built metal buildings and haphazard parking lots and roadways to make way for a new landscape commons – a central campus Lawn that organizes key academic and student life buildings. The Union is an ever-present backdrop to daily activities on the Lawn, both silent witness and focal point of each student’s time on campus. Student Life programs and retail dining venues energetically spill out onto the building’s broad steps and into its arcades and elevated porches. Sitting prominently on axis at the head of the Lawn, the Union is the ceremonial focus of campus events, and has become the home for graduation.

In addition to supporting a successful student center, the architecture of the Montview Union is the culmination of critical examination, engaged discussions, and collaborative design efforts to establish a distinctive University architectural legacy.

Liberty views the Montview Union as an extension of its mission, and as an exemplar of preferred building massing composition, materiality, and standard performance criteria – helping to guide future construction on a campus through a common language and harmonious campus composition, in keeping with the Union’s architectural pattern.

Left: Exterior of Montview Union + Students (Credit: Liberty University) Right: Exterior of Montview Union (Credit: Alan Karchmer)

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A Rich Mix of Uses The Montview Union is not a stand-alone structure; it is a somewhat surprising addition to the largest academic building on campus, DeMoss Hall. The Union springs off the unfortunately blank back wall of DeMoss, and reorients attention toward the Lawn to create an inviting and welcoming front that supports the new Campus Walk. While DeMoss offers core classroom spaces, it lacks the student-centered spaces needed on a university campus. The Union draws from Demoss’ classrooms and University departments, complementing academics with generous social spaces, dining areas, and key services including support from student life professionals. Connecting the Union to the core academic building on campus transforms what once was an inwardlyfocused “big box” into a dynamic joint center for academic and student life. The Montview Union addition helps to scale Demoss down to each student, and greatly improves the building’s interior sense of life and orientation with new vertical circulation and corridor connections that are bathed in daylight and campus views.

The Union is home to a variety of social, student life, and dining opportunities, customized to serve Liberty’s unique culture. The rich mix of Union uses is the culmination of an extensive programming effort including tours of similar facilities, focused student input, collaborative workshops with Student Life Professionals, and reviews with University leaders. Student lounges, study spaces, and meeting rooms provide flexible places for studying and gathering. On the topmost floor, a multipurpose event room enjoys views of campus and the Blue Ridge mountains while, on lower floors, a bowling alley and technology-rich game areas encourage recreational fun. The Union is most populated during the early evening, when student leadership groups such as Student Government and Clubs + Orgs populate open work and gathering areas. Such components of the Union have prominent locations in the building and find useful expression on the exterior to draw students in and encourage them to stay and participate.

Campus Walk & Campus Connections

VISITOR CENTER

Demoss Hall: Introverted and Vehicular Focus

GLASS MANSION

Student Union Addition: Extroverted Focus & Academic Lawn

VINES CENTER

CAMPUS WALK

LIBRARY

OUS DEMOSS CENTER

A NEW IDEA

Demos Hall: Introverted + Vehicular Focus

A NEW IDEA Student Union Addition: Extroverted Focus + Academic Lawn

Campus Walk + Campus Connections

Left: Visual Diagrams (Credit: VMDO Architects) Right: Atrium (Credit: Alan Karchmer)

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Left: Bowling Alley (Credit: Lincoln Barbour) Right #1: Atrium Forum (Credit: Tom Daly Right #2: Star Ginger (Credit: Tom Daly)

Left: Center for Multicultural Enrichment (Credit: Lincoln Barbour)

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Atrium Campus Recreation TV + Games Existing Demoss Hall Demoss Lobby + Porch New Arrival in Demoss Teahouse Lounge Porch Seating Steps Academic Lawn Mezzanines Center for Multicultural Enrichment Bridge Finishing Kitchen Existing Demoss Hall Military Veteran Center Alumni Ballroom Roof Terrance Loading Dock Student Government Kitchen Clubs + Organizations Campus Services 3-Seasons Room U-Foods Grill Outdoor Dining Dining Venue: Argo Tea Dining Venue: Star Ginger Dining Venue: Garbonzo’s Dining Venue: Wood Fire Grill Campus Recreation + Bowling Alley

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Transparency Montview Union’s extroverted focus is facilitated by a high performance envelope, featuring thermally-broken glazing systems that allow for expansive mountain views, ample daylight, and an overall sense of transparency, welcome, and inclusion. Virginia’s long local tradition of brick building informs the material palette’s sense of place, and brick cladding continues from outside to inside, helping to break down the building’s size into a series of smaller component parts. All exterior cladding is backed with super insulation, and detailed with a continuous air barrier system for thermal performance.

Student Life Professionals are strategically integrated throughout the building to serve and support students. The Campus Services department is located near the building’s entrance and acts as a central information gathering hub. The office of Campus Recreation supports the Union with student-programmed events and activities. Departments such as the Center for Multicultural Enrichment and the Military Veterans Center help champion the Union’s mission through outreach and events that build an educational community out of diversity.

Left: Atrium (Credit: Liberty University) Right: Porch + Porch Lounge (Credit: Alan Karchmer)

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Building Community with Dining The Union’s dining options create socially-rich destinations where students can gather together to participate in meals that strengthen their relationships with each other and with LU. Students can choose between six unique micro-restaurants, each offering its own distinctive atmosphere, featuring healthy options, and celebrating food preparation. Strategic flexibility is achieved through multi-purpose components that allow dining services to throttle service up during peak meal times and down again during off-hours, allowing dining areas to double as places for entertainment, recreation, and study. In particular, the dining areas buzz twice a week for lunch after the entire student community gathers at the adjacent Convocation Center. The 3-Seasons Dining Room can be reserved for communal gathering and events featuring family-style dining. In fair weather, large windows open to campus views and support garden al fresco meals.

Sodexo, Liberty’s dining services provider, has stopped using trays – which encourages healthy portions and significantly reduces the amount of food being thrown out. Food waste is taken to Liberty’s Morris Campus Garden, where an in-vessel composter transforms waste into nutrients. Seasonal crops that are grown in the garden, in turn, are donated to dining services and incorporated into food preparation.

Left: Argo Tea (Credit: Liberty University) Right: U-Foods Grill (Credit: Alan Karchmer)

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Left: U-Foods Grill (Credit: Tom Daly) Right: Argo Tea (Credit: Alan Karchmer)

Left: Star Ginger (Credit: Tom Daly)

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Forging a Hearth-Like Forum The Atrium Forum is the magnetic destination inside the Montview Union, at the joint between the existing DeMoss Hall and new construction. A vibrant open room at the intersection of circulation patterns, the Atrium buzzes with activity, encouraging chance encounters and community-building. The Atrium is vertically integrated with grand connecting stairs that offer a convenient central promenade through a cross-section of the building’s program areas. A variety of seating options encourage students to touch-down for a quick chat between classes, or settle in for longer periods of conversational study. While carefully maintaining a sense of intimacy for students, the design of the Atrium creates an iconic campus place at the heart of Liberty.

A carefully crafted wooden screen wall acts as a hearth in the center of the Union, and forges a striking visual terminus to the Lawn, while screening the blank wall of DeMoss behind. The rich character of the American Cherry screen wall brings a warm tactility to the Atrium, helping students feel at home as they interact. The screen wall is gently curved along the length of the grain to provide an engaging walk path and a thoughtful counterbalance to the strict meter and sharp corners of the architecture. From the front, the screen wall appears proud and monolithic. From behind, each slat is profiled to allow the transfer of filtered daylight while reflecting and diffusing sounds to create quiet spaces for study. The wooden screen wall will gracefully weather over time, registering the passing years as students matriculate.

Left: Steps of Montview Student Union (Credit: Liberty University) Right #1: Atrium (Credit: Lincoln Barbour) Right #2: Atrium Stairs (Credit: Lincoln Barbour)

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A Lantern-like Beacon The Union’s entrance is marked by a welcoming front porch with graceful wooden canopy and monumental steps that reach out to the campus and seamlessly engage the landscape. The warmth of the cypress porch soffit, complementing the granite and precast concrete steps, helps to create a comfortable place to sit. During the daytime, sunlight filtering into the Atrium through skylights between the canopy tongues penetrates deep into the building, dances across the Atrium’s brick piers, and animates the wooden screen wall. Students enjoy the shelter and seating of the porch. In the evening, when the Union really comes to life, the canopy and screen wall become a beacon-like lantern that frames the academic community within.

Generous windows and skylights bathe the Union in natural daylight and reinforce connections to the campus outside. A daylight harvesting sensor system ensure quality natural light enters the building and moderates necessary artificial lighting levels accordingly. As part of a campus-wide upgrade plan, the Union utilizes energy-saving LED fixtures with wireless lighting controls that analyze and measure lighting use. Wireless occupancy and vacancy sensors automatically switch lights off in unoccupied rooms. Such strategies improve the campus environment, reduce energy bills, and ultimately pass savings on to student programs.

Exterior of Montview + Porch (Credit: Alan Karchmer)

Exterior of Montview (Credit: Alan Karchmer)

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“ The first time I walked in, I felt like I was on a college campus.

I like the open layout of the building and how everybody has their own individual space but it’s also very communal. I love the big windows. It’s nice to be able to see outside. It’s not so dark and daunting like previous buildings on campus. It doesn’t feel like a serious, studious space … it’s more of a living room for students.”

St u dent I nter viewed du r ing O pening Week L ib er t y U niversit y

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Exterior of Montview (Credit: Lincoln Barbour)

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Narrative 1,000 Word Summary

100 Word Summary

Keystone of a Campus Transformation

Forging a Hearth-like Forum

In 2010, Liberty University embarked upon an ambitious building campaign designed to dramatically recast the campus’ physical identity and transform the institution from an online educational engine to a comprehensive place-based residential campus, with a distinct focus on Student Life. In just 7 years the University has invested nearly $1 billion toward the quality of its student experience through a campus master plan. The new Montview Union is the keystone of the campus transformation, the flagship for LU’s key goal to elevate Student Life on campus and ignite recruitment and retention. As the new geographic center of gravity for Student Life, the Union is the beating heart of the institution’s identity of excellence.

The Atrium Forum is the magnetic destination inside the Montview Union, at the joint between the existing DeMoss Hall and new construction. The Atrium is vertically integrated with grand connecting stairs that offer a convenient central promenade through a crosssection of the building’s program areas. A variety of seating options encourage students to touch-down for a quick chat between classes, or settle in for longer periods of conversational study. While carefully maintaining a sense of intimacy for students, the design of the Atrium creates an iconic campus place at the heart of Liberty.

Emblematic of the University and its mission, the Montview Union makes a place where meaningful relationships can be nurtured within a scholarly setting. Locating the Union at the center of a new Campus Walk, which links the entire spectrum of campus life, from recreation to residential areas, ensures the Union’s success in serving as a beacon of campus activity.

Liberty’s commitment to a student-centered pedestrian landscape sparked the elimination of poorly-built metal buildings and haphazard parking lots and roadways to make way for a new landscape commons – a central campus Lawn that organizes key academic and student life buildings. Student Life programs and retail dining venues energetically spill out onto the building’s broad steps and into its arcades and elevated porches. Sitting prominently on axis at the head of the Lawn, the Union is the ceremonial focus of campus events, and has become the home for graduation ceremonies.

Liberty views the Montview Union as an extension of its mission, and as an exemplar of preferred building massing composition, materiality, and standard performance criteria – helping to guide future construction on a campus through a common language, in keeping with the Union’s architectural pattern.

A carefully crafted wooden screen wall acts as a hearth in the center of the Union, and forges a striking visual terminus to the Lawn, while screening the blank wall of DeMoss behind.

The rich character of the American Cherry screen wall brings a warm tactility to the Atrium, helping students feel at home as they interact. The screen wall is gently curved along the length of the grain to provide an engaging walk path and a thoughtful counterbalance to the strict meter and sharp corners of the architecture.

The Union’s entrance is marked by a welcoming front porch with graceful wooden canopy and monumental steps that reach out to the campus and seamlessly engage the landscape.

The warmth of the cypress porch soffit, complementing the granite and precast concrete steps, helps to create a comfortable place to sit. During the daytime, sunlight filtering into the Atrium penetrates deep into the building, dances across the Atrium’s brick piers and animates the wooden screen wall. In the evening, when the Union really comes to life, the canopy and screen wall become a beacon-like lantern that frames the academic community within.

L ib er t y U niversit y M on tv i e w Stu de n t Un i on

100 Word Summary

A Rich Mix of Uses The Montview Union is not a stand-alone structure; it is a somewhat surprising addition to the largest academic building on campus, DeMoss Hall. The Union springs off the unfortunately blank back wall of DeMoss, and reorients attention toward the Lawn to create an inviting and welcoming front. Connecting the Union to the core academic building on campus transforms what once was an inwardly-focused “big box” into a dynamic joint center for academic and student life. The Montview Union addition helps to scale Demoss down to each student, and greatly improves the building’s interior sense of life and orientation with new vertical circulation and corridor connections that are bathed in daylight and campus views.

The Union is home to a variety of social, student life, and dining opportunities, customized to serve Liberty’s unique culture. The rich mix of Union uses is the culmination of an extensive programming effort including tours of similar facilities, focused student input, collaborative workshops with Student Life Professionals, and reviews with University leaders. Student lounges, study spaces, and meeting rooms provide flexible places for studying and gathering. A multipurpose event room enjoys views of the Blue Ridge mountains while a bowling alley and game areas encourage recreation. The Union is most populated during the early evening, when student leadership groups such as Student Government populate open work and gathering areas. Such components of the Union have prominent locations in the building and find useful expression on the exterior to draw students in and encourage them to stay and participate.

Student Life Professionals are strategically integrated throughout the building to serve and support students. The Campus Services department is located near the building’s entrance and acts as a central information gathering hub. Departments such as the Center for Multicultural Enrichment and the Military Veterans Center help champion the Union’s mission through outreach and events that build an educational community out of diversity.

The Union’s dining options create socially-rich destinations where students can gather together to participate in meals that strengthen their relationships with each other and with LU. Students can choose between six unique micro-restaurants, each offering its own distinctive atmosphere, featuring healthy options, and celebrating food preparation. Strategic flexibility is achieved through multi-purpose components that allow dining services to throttle service up during peak meal times and down again during off-hours, allowing dining areas to double as places for entertainment, recreation, and study.

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VMDO Architects 200 E Market St Charlottesville, Va 22902 434.296.5684 vmdo.com