Preparing for the student center
This past spring, Augustana’s administration sent a request for interest (RFI) to eight architectural firms with the aim to find the group that will design and build the new student center on Augustana’s campus. That number narrowed to four, and then to two when the same firm that transformed Emmy Carlsson Evald Hall, BLDD Architects, rose to the top along with CFB Architects and Planners.
On an early September afternoon, a representative from BLDD Architects spoke before a campus audience in the Olin auditorium and presented two versions of a possible design for a two-story, 35,000-square-foot student center built into the hillside below the Swenson Hall circle drive. The proposed student center designs included a wide-open lounge, media center, office/meeting spaces for the Student Government Association and other groups, a multi-purpose (lecture and performance) room, game room and bistro area for food venues.
The architects predict it will take eight or nine months to prepare complete documentation to send out to construction bidders. Our goal for this capital project is to have the new student center completed for fall of 2010.
Preliminary rendering of a design concept for the student center, second floor view.