Adohi Hall Receives 2021 AIA Housing Award
Category: Specialized Housing

The largest cross laminated timber (CLT) building in the United States and the first large-scale mass timber residence hall and living learning setting. Leers Weinzapfel led a design collaborative including Modus Studio (Fayetteville, AR), Mackey Mitchell Architects (St. Louis), and OLIN (Philadelphia), in the realization of this new campus gateway project. The 202,027-square-foot Adohi Hall creates a new residential college with emphasis on a creative live learn environment within a relaxed, informal, tree-lined landscape that re-conceptualizes university housing.

The AIA Housing Awards, “emphasize good housing as a necessity of life, a sanctuary for the human spirit, and a valuable national resource. Recipients show the world how beauty, safety, sustainability, and comfort can come together.”

The Judges commented, “Lovely secondary and shared spaces and illustration of the use of timber throughout, including in dorm rooms. The building also considers and reflects the broader landscape, linking interior and exterior spaces through a transparent ground plane.”

Learn more about this project here

See the award announcement here

Dartmouth’s 1960s-era Anonymous Hall Makes a Name for Itself with 2030 Overhaul
The Architect’s Newspaper Carbon Crushing Façade

“The college asked our advice about incorporating two vacant buildings on the site for the initiative. Our assessment determined that one, a lab building, should be demolished, and the former Medical School Library should be transformed and expanded as a gateway and social center for the north quad. With its high-tech, efficient curtain wall; solar canopy; and high R-value walls, carbon savings exceed all expectations, and design models show the project energy use approaches net-zero” explained Leers Weinzapfel principal-in-charge Josiah Stevenson

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world-architects Published Anonymous Hall at Dartmouth College

Anonymous Hall is the new name for Dartmouth College’s former Dana Biomedical Library, which was stripped down to its steel-and-concrete frame and transformed by Leers Weinzapfel Associates into a sleek four-story building wrapped in terra cotta and glass. The architects answered a few questions about the building, whose name recognizes the many generous alumni who have given back to the school over the years. Read More. 

American School & University 2021 March Issue Into the Wood
In pursuit of more environmentally friendly education facilities, some designers have begun to embrace mass timber construction techniques.

“Mass Timber is changing how construction is done,” says Tom Chung, a principal at Leers Weinzapfel Associates. “Construction is completed more quickly, there is much less labor needed, it’s quieter, and there is significantly less construction waste.” Mass Timber Construction is appealing to advocates of sustainability. By using wood instead of steel or concrete, a project leaves a much lighter carbon footprint. Read more.

The Architect’s Newspaper Features Adohi Hall, University of Arkansas
Leers Weinzapfel Associates breaks down how it got started with mass timber and current projects.

Tom Chung, one of Leers Weinzapfel’s principals, said that the firm is bullish on mass timber for its many obvious, pragmatic advantages: it’s a renewable resource, has a less carbon-intensive manufacturing process than concrete or steel, and can be locally sourced across much of the country. But for Andrea Leers, cofounding principal, the material’s advantages go beyond economic or even ecological considerations. “The contentment that comes from being in a wood environment is a huge incentive,” she said. “The smell of the wood, the feel of it, the appreciation of it is something rooted in human experience. Everybody knows wood. Everybody’s touched trees. It’s very immediate.” Read More.