Title: Oxford Student Center at Oxford College of Emory University
Location of Proejct: Oxford, Georgia
Project Completion Date: 2/1/2020
Firm Name: SSOE | Stevens & Wilkinson

Short Description: Our architecture firm was tasked with creating a new “center of gravity” for the Emory Oxford College campus, re-purposing the original 1960’s era 20,000 GSF Dining Hall with a 12,000 GSF addition situated on the site to establish a new campus “front door”. The design balances honoring Oxford College’s rich historical Architectural traditions and more contemporary themes afforded by the original vaulted, day-lit spaces in the original Dining Hall. Highly energy and water efficient, the solution creates a vibrant student gathering place, a new social heart of the campus, with a vibe focused on enhancing the student experience and success.

Architect's Statement: The Oxford Student Center (OSC) is the new social heart of Emory University’s original campus located in Oxford, GA. Serving as the new home of campus life activities and as the new front door to the campus the projects creates a welcoming entrance, an authentic Oxford College first impression for prospective students and the Oxford Community, all centered around student activity. Thoughtful attention to details, lighting, colors, scale, materials, and furniture supports student success and activities, projecting the College’s diversity, overarching excellence, and leadership in academic, research, sustainability, and technology.

The architectural solution was developed to inspire collaboration, inclusion, and a strong sense of the Oxford community. The project scope included the renovation of a recently replaced mid-century Dining Hall (20,000sf), a two-level addition (12,000sf), and site improvements integrating the project into existing pedestrian pathways and plazas. The OSC fosters first year student engagement and second year student leadership through collaborative student organization space that supports the 90+ student organizations on campus, a multipurpose forum created from the original dining room, a cafe, a bookstore, social lounges, gaming ‘hot spot’ and Campus Life offices. The design solution promotes the students’ sense of ownership and belonging, a place they are comfortable using, changing, and shaping to work for them.

Exposed wood ceilings, feature walls and elements, pendant light fixtures, and dark metal accents, and brown leathers tie the building into its historic campus context. Emory University colors, bright murals, vibrant accent colors both brand the facility to the Emory Community while also providing a contemporary image that projects the energy of the students. The arrangement of the floor plan addresses the axis of Pierce Street placing the main entrance and lobby space centered on this important entrance drive terminus. The student organization collaboration workshop fronts Wesley Street and the new Dining Hall Building providing views to and from this important hub of student activity.

The second level of the new addition provides a new home for the Campus Life department with office and collaboration spaces, allowing this function to be secured after hours while the remaining building stays active. From the new addition and heading west is a new central East -West Corridor that acts as an internal pedestrian street connecting the remaining program spaces. This planning device helps organize the building and systems distribution, allowing the previous dining room to act independently as the new student multipurpose forum for lectures, dances, concerts, exhibitions, and other large community gatherings. Off of this internal street, students and the community will find an art gallery, the campus bookstore, a small café, and gaming center, and a social lounge with music practice room.

The placement of program in the plans was also studied with regards to potential views in and out of the building, daylighting and glare, and energy use and reduction. Building on the embodied carbon of the existing facility the design team worked hard to achieve one of the lowest EUI (Energy Use Intensity) in Emory’s building inventory.

Design Challenges:

The new Oxford College Student Center was challenged to better its sister-campus’ building energy performance relative to facility EUI (Energy Use Intensity)….and do this while re-purposing an existing building constructed in 1967. Our architecture firm collaborated with a diverse multi-disciplinary team employing an integrated data-driven design process to investigate and test cost-effective strategies to optimize building energy performance, resulting in the implementation of a coordinated selection of building systems including chilled beams, energy recovery, solar shading / daylight harvesting, enhanced lighting & controls and water-saving fixtures. Compared to similar buildings of this use type, the new Student Center is estimated to achieve a reduction of nearly 30% in energy consumption (vs. ASHRAE 90.1-2010 baseline) targeting an annual EUI below 60 (consuming 59.33 kBtu/sf/yr) with over 40% in reductions in water consumption. Given the opportunities to revive the existing building as a part of the overall design, the design team was able to match ambitious sustainable energy performance goals with materials and resource conservation by reusing nearly 70% of existing building material and avoiding diversion of construction material to a landfill. Our team further explored novel ways to overlay objectives related to economy in building materials with design goals focused on creating rich interior spaces embracing a casual and comfortable vibe. The resulting interior design utilizes exposed wood and concrete vaulted ceilings and building systems infrastructure to provide that “old pair of jeans” feel student focus groups that contributed to the design were looking for….a space for them, by them.