The University of Notre Dame announced this morning the largest building project in its 172-year history, integrating the academy, student life, and athletics with the construction of more than 750,000 sf in three new buildings attached to the west, east, and south sides of the school's iconic football stadium, at a projected cost of $400 million.
The plan, called the Campus Crossroads Project, features new structures attached to and serving the stadium: a west building for student life services, including space for student organizations, a recreation center and career center; an east building for the anthropology and psychology departments and a digital media center; and a south building for the Department of Music and the Sacred Music at Notre Dame program. The east and west buildings also will include some 3,000 to 4,000 premium seats for the football stadium with supporting club amenities.
The lead architectural firm for the Crossroads Project is The S/L/A/M Collaborative. RATIO Architects is the co-designer. Other consultants include Workshop Architects for the student center and 360 Architecture for the recreation, fitness, and hospitality areas. The contractor is Barton Malow Co.
Central components to the plan include the addition of meeting, research, and teaching venues, as well as facilities that do not currently exist on campus, such as a 500-person ballroom. The various new spaces also will be designed to accommodate multiple functions for multiple departments, such as the stadium club spaces, which also will be used for student services, academic event space, classrooms, conferences, career fairs, and other campus and community activities.
The exterior design of the Campus Crossroads Project is inspired by Knute Rockne’s original Notre Dame Stadium—which still stands today as the core of the facility—and is wed with materials, massing, and details taken from many of the Collegiate Gothic buildings on the campus.
The area between the stadium and the DeBartolo Hall classroom building will become a pedestrian plaza with walkways, trees, planters, and seating areas. The entire project will include sustainability practices consistent with other University projects.
The project also will enhance the football fan experience on game days. A variety of premium seating options—both indoor and outdoor and mostly club seats—will be available on three upper levels on the east and west sides. A hospitality area also is planned for the new building on the south end of the stadium.
Football fans, especially younger ones, have expressed a clear desire to have better access to data and video when attending Notre Dame games. Some of that will be addressed through enhanced broadband connectivity and some by the introduction of video, though the shape that will take has not yet been finalized. However, to the extent the University provides video, whether in the concourse or in the stadium itself—similar to the philosophy in Purcell Pavilion and the Compton Family Ice Arena—there will be no commercial signage or advertising.
Notre Dame Stadium opened in 1930 and was expanded to its current configuration in 1997. One of the nation’s most iconic athletics venues, it is used for home football games, the University Commencement Ceremony and several other events.
Features of the three new buildings include:
West building
Space designed to enhance student development and formation will dominate the nine-story west building. Planning has ensured that the new facility will complement the student organization space and administrative offices located in the historic LaFortune Student Center.
Levels 1 and 2: Flexible, state-of-the-art meeting rooms, graduate and undergraduate student lounges, a dining area, student organization space and administrative offices.
Levels 3 and 4: Recreational sports and fitness facilities (the Rolfs Sports Recreation Center will become the practice home for the men’s and women’s varsity basketball teams).
Level 5: A career services center, centralized and expanded with more than 40 interview rooms, multiple training rooms and conference areas, an employer lounge and advising offices. The existing working press space on this level will be integrated into a premium seating area for the stadium.
Level 6: Mechanical support.
Level 7: A 500-seat student ballroom, club seating for football and booths for NBCSports telecasts of home football games. Student-oriented programming will have priority booking for non-game weekends.
Level 8: Premium stadium seats and terraces that will look onto the campus and the playing field.
Level 9: Club seating, boxes for home and visiting coaches, security booths and boxes for administrative and athletic department leaders.
Basement: Food service space for the three new buildings and the stadium.
South building
The relocation of the Department of Music and Sacred Music Program will provide much needed new and state-of-the-art space for these growing programs. It also will put music into close proximity to other performing arts departments and programs.
Level 1: Recital and rehearsal halls and the Leahy gate grand entrance to the stadium.
Level 2: A large music library, to be relocated from the Hesburgh Library, classrooms and rehearsal and tutoring rooms.
Level 3: A 350-person club/lounge.
Level 4: Department of Music offices, practice rooms and storage.
Level 5: The Sacred Music Program, offices, organ practice rooms and storage.
Level 6: Mechanical, with a scoreboard on the exterior.
East building
Offices and laboratories for the Departments of Anthropology andPsychology, which are housed in a variety of buildings on campus, now will be in one place and located closer to other social sciences departments, the College of Scienceand international institutes.
Level 1: A digital media center with a 2,000-square-foot studio and production, teaching, learning, research and scholarship facilities for use by faculty, students, University Communications, athletics and information technology will position Notre Dame as a national leader in what is a rapidly expanding and increasingly important component of higher education. A control room will support faith-based programming, such as Masses at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, as well as athletics events, performing arts presentations and academic lectures and speeches.
Level 2: Anthropology offices, administrative space, conference and tutoring areas and multifunction research and teaching labs.
Levels 3, 4 and 5: Psychology offices, classrooms, labs, computer rooms and a student lounge.
Level 6: Mechanical support.
Level 7: Outdoor club seating for football, outdoor terraces and a large space that will double as a club area and flexible classroom.
Level 8: Outdoor club seating for football.
Level 9: Working press box, radio booths and a club area with indoor and outdoor premium seating for football.
For more on the Campus Crossroads Project, visit: http://crossroads.nd.edu.
Related Stories
Architects | Mar 9, 2023
A. Eugene (Gene) Kohn, Co-Founder of Kohn Pedersen Fox, dies at 92
A. Eugene (Gene) Kohn, FAIA RIBA JIA, Co-founder of international architecture firm Kohn Pedersen Fox, died today of cancer. He was 92.
Affordable Housing | Mar 8, 2023
7 affordable housing developments built near historic districts, community ties
While some new multifamily developments strive for modernity, others choose to retain historic aesthetics.
Architects | Mar 8, 2023
Is Zoom zapping your zip? Here are two strategies to help creative teams do their best work
Collaborating virtually requires a person to filter out the periphery of their field of vision and focus on the glow of the screen. Zoom fatigue is a well-documented result of our over-reliance on one method of communication to work. We need time for focus work but working in isolation limits creative outcomes and innovations that come from in-person collaboration, write GBBN's Eric Puryear, AIA, and Mandy Woltjer.
Building Team | Mar 8, 2023
Call for Speakers: BD+C’s 2023 Women in Residential + Commercial Construction Conference
The 2023 Women in Residential + Commercial Construction conference event will take place October 25-27 in Nashville, Tenn., and will bring together more than 300 women leaders from all facets of the $1.4 trillion U.S. residential and commercial constructing sector.
Reconstruction & Renovation | Mar 8, 2023
Hoffmann Architects + Engineers receives Lucy G. Moses Preservation Award from New York Landmarks Conservancy
Hoffmann Architects + Engineers, a design firm specializing in the rehabilitation of building exteriors, announces that the historic facade rehabilitation and window replacement at the 69th Regiment Armory has been selected for the Lucy G. Moses Preservation Award, the New York Landmarks Conservancy’s prestigious recognition for outstanding preservation efforts.
Architects | Mar 7, 2023
David Chipperfield named 2023 Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate
Widely regarded as architecture's highest honor, the 2023 Pritzker Architecture Prize has been awarded to UK-based architect David Chipperfield. In honoring Chipperfield with the award, the Pritzker Prize jury cited the architect's "commitment to an architecture of understated but transformative civic presence and the definition—even through private commissions—of the public realm."
Multifamily Housing | Mar 7, 2023
Multifamily housing development in Chicago takes design inspiration from patchwork and quilting
HUB 32, a 65-unit multifamily housing development, will provide affordable housing and community amenities in Chicago’s Garfield Park neighborhood. Brooks + Scarpa’s recently unveiled design takes inspiration from the American tradition of patchwork and quilting.
Industrial Facilities | Mar 6, 2023
The largest planned logistics and business park in North America gets under way in Southern California
The $25 billion World Logistics Center will boost the supply chain capabilities of Southern California and will serve as a distribution center for destinations across the continent.
Healthcare Facilities | Mar 6, 2023
NBBJ kicks off new design podcast with discussion on behavioral health facilities
During the second week of November, the architecture firm NBBJ launched a podcast series called Uplift, that focuses on the transformative power of design. Its first 30-minute episode homed in on designing for behavioral healthcare facilities, a hot topic given the increasing number of new construction and renovation projects in this subsector.
K-12 Schools | Mar 6, 2023
Benefitting kids through human-centric high school design
Ingrid Krueger, AIA, LEED AP, shares why empathetic, well-designed spaces are critical in high schools.