Overview
The Kansas State University Seaton Hall Addition and Renovation groundbreaking ceremony happens today at 11:00 a.m. CST. Seaton Hall Complex is home to the nationally recognized Kansas State College of Architecture, Planning, and Design (APDesign). Walter P Moore will serve as the structural engineer along with construction manager JE Dunn and architects Ennead Architects (New York, NY) and BNIM (Kansas City, MO).
Once completed in 2017, the Seaton Complex will have been transformed into a 21st-century hub for teaching, research, and learning that reflects the college’s green initiative and promotes interdisciplinary collaboration. The $75M project will include the renovation of 80,000 square feet of existing space and an additional 114,000 square feet for the school of APDesign. These extensive renovations will extend the life of two existing buildings, Mechanics Hall built in 1875 and Seaton East, built in 1908. Constructed just 12 years after the campus founding, Mechanics Hall was one of the first buildings on the Manhattan, KS Campus.
The new addition consists of a steel-framed building that will provide daylight studio space along with an expanded woodwork lab, fabrication lab, model lab, and center for design excellence that will be visible from the ground-level entry. At the roof level, a large experimental green roof will provide students and faculty the ability to conduct various green roof systems research. Tim de Noble, Dean of APDesign concludes “this is a superb opportunity for us to show the potential of design and planning in transforming a historic building into an environmentally sensitive and technically innovative 21st-century academic teaching and learning environment.”
