A Tour of the New Building
April 15, 2005
Like everybody in our Department, I followed the construction of the new building with great interest, and looked forward leaving behind the stark, cramped workspace we occupied to that point. We watched them tear down the middle-aged Engineering building and prepare the site almost two years before we were allowed in to see how the construction was progressing. These pictures document the state of the building as of April 15, 2005. The tour begins outside.
The outside entry on the east side is a small atrium that looks up the side of the new building. You bend around the right at the end, and see the main level consisting mainly of classrooms and engineering labs. From there, the basement level also contains numerous classrooms and a tunnel to University Centre.
The atrium is interesting, its rare here to have a nice open indoor space. Past planning being what it was, there's also a range of architectural styles in the engineering buildings to try to bring together here, but I think it will work. We're stuck with it either way :)
One wall of the atrium is entirely the old external wall of the next-to-newest engineering building. On that surface they've mounted four large ventilation pipes. Since the adjaced wall is half limestone (the next-to-newest building) and half steel (the new building), the visual effect of these pipes seem to be an effort to tie the disparate spaces together.
These two stitched panoramas basically show the whole space
Entering back into the building, we go up the side stairwell to the top floor
Going back inside, we can see the atrium from the top
I also managed to get a few pictures of office areas to get an idea of what these will look like
And finally a few miscellaneous images
I also took a couple of movie clips (these are unfortunately rather dark and choppy, as my digital camera doesn't adapt well to light changes while in movie mode): Atrium1 Atrium2 Sample Faculty Office