Butler University Health & Recreation Complex and
Student Housing Village

Project Description:
Butler University’s mission is to provide the highest quality of liberal and professional education by creating and fostering a stimulating intellectual community built upon interactive dialogue and inquiry among faculty, staff and students.

The Health and Recreation Complex, located to the west of Hinkle Fieldhouse, is carefully nestled in a hillside surrounded by a wooded area. In utilizing the hillside, the project team was able to create a pass-through connector for students between the main campus and the new Student Housing Village.

Further east along the Promenade, carefully woven onto the long hill that borders the west length of Boulevard Place, the new Student Housing Village overlooks the Butler Bowl to the west and the historic Butler/Tarkington neighborhood to the east. The student housing village is comprised of six apartment buildings made up of 126 total four-bedroom units and four single units. The Village also features a village center, the Dawg-House, named after the university mascot. The Dawg-House serves as a community center where residents can gather to watch their favorite show on the flat screen TV, play a game of pool or simply hang out. A small convenience store and outdoor seating are the perfect solution for students’ mid-afternoon snack cravings and study breaks.

Jury Comments:
“The program is evocative and complex and the architecture responds to it….”
“We like the continuity of materials…there is a residential quality to the residential center and something different to the rec center that has been properly done and which is so often not the case in university residential….”
“It has to deal with the larger scale of the composition of buildings but they also did a nice job of detailing each building.”

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Project Description:
The house was conceptualized as three separate elements comprised of two living units and an interstitial space tying them together. The clients have two grown children who will not live in the house, but need their own rooms. Those rooms are separated from the master bedroom by a bridge on the second floor. Thus, the basic living pattern of the family becomes manifest in the form of the house.

The simple massing of the house presents a gable form that is clearly part of the vernacular of the historic neighborhood in which it is located. Rather than add additional elements to the house, the simple mass is instead carved away to let the negative space create a covered front entry and back porch. The gabled profile is extruded beyond the plane of the front façade to accentuate its form. The central section connects the separate functions of the house. In the interior of the house, the transitional space becomes an incredible volume with the bridge running through it. The carefully crafted placement of the walls creates separation between the functional elements of the space while allowing them to coexist in the same volumetric space.

Jury Comments:
“As a gesture that can be part of a larger whole it is very sensible. I could imagine this could create as an example a larger environment of similar dwellings that could be quite evocative.”

“Obviously drawn from the other stuff around without looking just like it…good vernacular.”

“Plan for narrow site is properly organized…vibrant interior spaces”

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Project Description:
Established in 2003, Frankey’s is one of Indianapolis’ only independently owned clothing boutiques specializing in cutting-edge clothing from an ever-changing list of trendsetting fashion designers. Asked to make a fashion-forward, upscale boutique the design solution involved disconnecting the store from the project site, creating a quiet and flexible interior and restraining the palette and lighting designs to allow the clothes to shine. An uninterrupted field of European hard wood flooring allows for endless configurations of mobile stainless steel fixtures. To provide an outline for organization, the 22’ high exposed ceiling is interrupted with a series of drywall bulkheads that fold down the shell walls to create feature vignettes.

Jury Comments:
“The project presents a direct solution with modest and beautiful moments”

“The reductive material palate and specific editing choices makes it work.”

“The best interior submittal very skillfully done”.

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Project Description:
This 85,600 square-foot Science Center completes the definition of the campus mall and strengthens the coherence and integrity of the overall campus. Its placement near the center of campus serves as a bridge between science and non-science programs and reinforces the existing pedestrian circulation patterns of this small Indiana private college. The design of the exterior complements the scale and character of existing campus buildings by utilizing a familiar palette of brick, stone and glass. Inside, the client stressed that the design needed to accentuate their hands-on approach to science by providing informal places for students and faculty to interact and a flexible learning environment that puts the doing of science on display. .

Jury Comments:
“We really like how it finishes off the quad…with integrity and without fuss”

“There is clarity to the floor plan and site plan arrangement. Very well done. ”

Regarding a photo one professor on the jury noted “I don’t lecture in many rooms that look like that. It looks like a good space to teach in.”

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