On October 20, Wentworth officially opened its two newest buildings. The Flanagan Campus Center is a central hub for student activity on campus, with a fitness center, student lounges, and a renovated dining area. The Center for Sciences and Biomedical Engineering—the first new academic building constructed on campus in nearly 40 years—features new lab spaces and serves as the new home for the College of Arts and Sciences.
WILLIAM H. FLANAGAN CAMPUS CENTER
BIGGER BEATTY
8,700 square feet of additional space was added to Beatty—including two stories of new space in the building’s rear and a single-story addition to the front, plus 20,000 square feet were renovated. The Campus Center addresses the needs of a predominantly residential campus.
WIT WORK
Both projects featured home-grown talent, with a total of 15 alumni serving in leadership positions for the project teams: the Flanagan Campus Center (Shawmut and Spagnolo Gisness & Associates Inc.), the Center for Sciences and Biomedical Engineering (BOND and Perkins & Will), and Wentworth.
ARCHITECT’S FAVORITE FEATURE
“There is a spot just inside the entry where it all comes together,” says Steve Cunningham of Spagnolo, Gisness & Associates. “From that vantage, you see students lounging, studying, or socializing in the new Pavilion addition; churning treadmills in the fitness center; students connecting over lunch in the dining area; others ascending the stairs to the library. You feel the history of the building and see the values of the school expressed in large-scale words in the soaring red graphic that serves as a constant reminder of those values and a marker for the new campus center.”
FIVE-STAR FOOD
It’s a good thing they built a gym downstairs: the new dining facility includes a brick pizza oven, a smoothie machine, and homemade pastries baked by an onsite pastry chef. New evening service stretches to 11:00 p.m. to fuel late-night cram sessions.
THE NAMESAKE
William H. Flanagan, Machine Construction & Tool Design ’51, entrepreneur and founder of communications design and manufacturing giant Nexus Incorporated. He donated $10 million to the Institute in 2008—the largest gift in the school’s history—to build the campus center.
SWEAT EQUITY
The Douglas D. Schumann Fitness Center features state-of-the-art equipment. Within the first six weeks of the fall 2012 semester, the Center had 15,536 visits—an average of 409 visits per day.
CENTER FOR SCIENCES AND BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING
FIRST IMPRESSION
The new Ira Allen entrance features a seven-foot-tall, 1,800-lb steel sculpture called Constellations. The piece was donated by artist Dennis Kowal, whose public work appears everywhere from France to Florida.
LAB STATS
Added 12 labs: four physics labs, three chemistry labs, two biomedical engineering labs, one biology lab, one material science lab, and a biodiesel lab.
IRA’S PAST
Ira Allen was built in 1901 and purchased by Wentworth in 1980. The cost? For both Ira Allen and the Boston Trade High School building—which would become the Annex—Wentworth promised the city 13 tuition scholarships each year for its high school graduates, worth about $30,000 at the time.
ARCHITECT’S FAVORITE FEATURE
Says Andrew Grote of Perkins + Will, “My favorite space is definitely the Forum, which is the triple-height space that connects the existing building with the new lab wing—it provides student and faculty with a wide range of spaces for study, collaboration, and socialization.”
ALLEN ADDITION
Along with a full rehab of its existing interior, 19,000 square feet of new space were added to the rear of the Ira Allen building.
CAMPUS AS A LAB
A total of 33 students were hired as co-ops during the Ira Allen construction, and more than 1,000 students toured the site as part of a hands-on learning experience. The number of workers was as high as 150 on the project’s busiest day.
—Dan Morrell
