When our project team first saw the site for the future Warch Campus Center at Lawrence University, we couldn’t believe our luck. Rarely does a site present a team and an institution such opportunities. Located on a verdant hillside right on the riverbank, the site, designated by an existing master plan, had unparalleled views and access to the 200-mile-long Fox River, vital to the once-booming paper-making industry in Appleton, Wis. Inherent with its beauty, however, came its challenges.

To reach the site from the main campus, everyone had to file across a 5-foot-wide catwalk-style bridge that spanned a busy road through campus before dropping sharply. The tight parcel on the other side of the street had a 70-foot elevation drop and an abutting residence hall.

KSS Architects, based in Philadelphia and Princeton, N.J., and Uihlein-Wilson Architects, in Milwaukee, wanted to shape the new campus center to reinforce the university’s mission of educational excellence and strong community. The 24/7 building would provide a heart for campus life and activities around the clock.

Previous campus planning had turned its head away from the industrial river, opting for the more-traditional pattern of focusing campus green space and buildings along a main street. In general, other campus buildings were simple and traditional with an abundance of local limestone; low-scale buildings along the campus edge sadly turned their backs to the once-polluted river.

The new project had to be engaging, robust, versatile and reflective of both the university’s history and future. We looked to balance the transparency of the spaces with each other and to the campus with the requirements of distinct programming spaces. The project responds to both the campus and the river and ultimately seeks to connect the experience of the two.

Content, Expression and Flow

Completed on schedule for the start of the 2009 school year, Warch Campus Center reads like a great book: rich with content, beautiful in expression, and natural in flow. Its location at the river bend delivers unparalleled views to historic paper mills, river locks, and wooded parklands — all symbols of the area’s rich heritage.

A spacious land bridge has replaced the narrow catwalk crossing, strengthening the connection between academic buildings to the campus’ west and the residence halls on the east. The pedestrian path reaches into the building and is the organizing mechanism of the project.

At the crossroads of the street, a café with outdoor seating welcomes the community. A soaring roof with an exposed wood structure balances the lower scale of adjacent buildings with the lightness of the river treetops. Parallel to the street, an animated grand stair connects the levels of the building.  

From the south, the four-story, 107,000-square-foot building literally emerges from the ground. Materials embodying the elements of the river rise up to form the foundation and lower levels. Exposed concrete transforms into locally quarried limestone on wall masses, which are punctuated with glazing at lower levels before becoming full-height windows, curtain walls, and ultimately soaring clerestories at the building’s roofline. The tower beckons the community to the building and punctures the skyline in homage to the smokestacks of its manufacturing neighbors. 

In a region that experiences snow and freezing temperatures for half the academic year, we strategically oriented the building to have a generous southern edge and aligned program spaces with the amount of incoming daylighting. Collaborative and public areas, such as a multipurpose great room, occupy the upper levels where daylighting is nearly constant and views are open. On lower levels, sunlight filters through tree branches into informal performance and event spaces. At the lowest level, nestled amongst dense tree trunks and brush, the main dining room is perfect for intimate conversations and self-reflection.

With a strong connection to the outside, each level also has different exterior spaces. The great room floats with a balcony connecting back to a stone terrace at the hillside precipice, which then leads to terraces carved into the hillside and edged by a water rill that naturally manages building and site stormwater runoff to the river.

Given its tight footprint, the campus center could only be successful community space with the right program adjacencies and accessibility. During one design charrette, students shrewdly opted to relocate the main dining area from the ground level — the third floor due to site topography — to the bottom floor. Though it was their least convenient location, they wanted the building to have continuous traffic flow through all four floors, past the information lobby, campus store, coffee shop, event space, study rooms, offices, and finally the dining hall. The thoughtful navigation also fulfilled students’ inherent need to “see and be seen.” 

A Gold Star

In anticipation of the building’s continuous use, KSS and Uihlein-Wilson selected durable and locally produced finish materials that would endure in aesthetics and maintenance. With its small-town setting surrounded by nature, Lawrence University also made sustainability a project priority.

The slate-paved “Main Street” leads users from the main entrance, wends through the space before returning outdoors to a bluff-top terrace. FSC-certified wood panels, roof deck and trusses integrate with the river’s forested edge.

Ultimately, as a testament to our team’s collaborative efforts, the project blew past its initial goal of LEED Silver certification and became the first higher education building in Wisconsin to achieve LEED Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. On this project, the contractor, Boldt Construction Co., debuted their “green construction trailer” beta project. The trailer consumes half the energy of a normal construction trailer and provides a more pleasant environment for workers.

During construction, Boldt recycled more than 96 percent of construction waste — a total of 7 million pounds. Soon after the project broke ground, the university hung educational boards about the project’s sustainability initiatives on the construction fence. Lawrence’s admissions office personnel added the construction site as a stop on their campus tour, engaging hundreds of prospective students in the future of the institution. 

 Low-flow plumbing fixtures will reduce water consumption by an estimated 30 percent of EPA standards, and the HVAC system was designed to be 21 percent more energy efficient than industry standard. The student activities space overlooks the building’s vegetated green roof and landscaping of native and adaptive species, irrigated only with non-potable water.

Commitment to a sustainable building didn’t stop with construction but continues with the ongoing choices university officials make. Lawrence University has adopted a cleaning program that uses natural products and recyclable paper products. Campus dining is trayless, which saves an estimated 286,000 gallons of water annually. A cafe serves locally harvested, organic coffee to eager students and faculty, and to the west, the campus center looks out to the university’s organic vegetable garden, the harvest of which is served in the dining hall.

The ease with which Warch Campus Center became a part of the campus environment makes it succeed as a community living room. It doesn’t have any flashy bells and whistles inside or outside. Instead, it embraces its unique and natural setting and allows student life and occupants to take center stage.



Pamela Rew, AIA, is a partner at KSS Architects and the project designer for Warch Campus Center, Lawrence University.