Earlier this month, Missouri State University’s Greenwood Laboratory School boys’ basketball team took home the Class 2 state title for the first time since 1942. With dreams of hosting tournaments and bigger events, the university hired BRP to design a multi-phase locker room and multipurpose addition for the lab school.
In 2012, BRP designed the LEED Silver certified Greenwood Science Scholars’ addition. Then in 2017, BRP became involved when the school wanted to provide new locker room facilities.
Phase I, completed in August 2018, consisted of a locker room addition to the main level of the school. The new locker rooms are positioned so that they support the existing gym as well as the planned multipurpose addition.
In 2018, BRP began design work on the new multipurpose addition for the school. To gain a better understanding of what the client wanted in a new facility, Laura Daugherty, BRP Architect, went with them, touring different area gyms for a day. “The tour was very beneficial. It helped me understand what they liked and disliked. We could all stand in a similar space and get a feel for the size. That is quite often a hard thing for clients to understand. This way we all experienced it together and were on the same page,” Laura says. Gerri Kielhofner, BRP Architect and Partner adds, “this trip to other facilities has benefitted multiple times during design. The Greenwood folks, and BRP for that matter, better understood what result they wanted after seeing what did and didn’t work at other facilities.”
The new facility will have 660 permanent seats. About half will be full seat backs with cup holders while the other half will be bleachers. All will be fully retractable to allow cross courts for everyday use. There will also be a stage that will have a 40 ft x 20 ft opening for performances, an A/V system and a fully digital scoreboard that could show video feeds of the game. A weight room and room for a trainer will also be added.
The addition will be a new front door for Greenwood and will sit along Missouri State University’s Bear Boulevard, the main entrance to the campus. The new entry will feature a 130 ft long glass wall at the entry which angles out to the street. The façade of the addition will have around 60 LED strip lights mounted into a patterned metal panel wall that will light up at night.
Since this is an addition, certain design elements were added so it would fit seamlessly with the rest of the school. Materials such as brick from the original school, cast stone and the same high-performance glass from the science lab addition will be used. “Like most 1960’s school buildings, the existing school is long and low so keeping a long elevation with small elements that interrupt the mass was a design strategy. The science lab addition set up a similar language so we are keeping some of that theme as well so that all of the parts will create a pleasing composition,” explains Laura.
For Laura, “this project is a chance to bring Greenwood a great building that will put their school on the map, both within the MSU campus, as well as within their sports district. The MSU campus has a great collection of buildings and it’s exciting to get to add to that list.”
Project Team:
Owner: Missouri State University
Architect: BRP Architects
MEP Engineers: RTM Consulting Engineers
A/V System Consultant: Southwest A/V
Structural Engineers: J&M Engineering
Civil: Anderson Engineering, Inc.
Landscape Architect: frankZdesign, LLC
Also in the March Newsletter: Harlingen Convention Center Set to Open Soon BRP Welcomes George Mandrik to the Team
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