Education
NADAAA and HDR team up for mass timber architecture school addition
HDR Pavilion at the College of Architecture at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln
The reviews are in, and the new mass timber HDR Pavilion at the College of Architecture at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln is already a hit. Designed as a collaboration between Boston-based NADAAA and the project’s namesake, Omaha-based HDR, the pavilion has already been featured in Architectural Record—just months after its opening.
HDR Pavilion at the College of Architecture at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Speaking at the end of the first full semester of occupancy, Dean Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg already sees dividends on the new building. “It’s just amazing from a teaching standpoint,” he says. “I love the clarity and the integrity because you can just see how all the parts and pieces go together, how sheer is addressed, how lateral bracing [is addressed].” And the positive reception has not just been from the students. “I walked an alum through the building this weekend and he literally hugged the lateral bracing,” he says.
HDR Pavilion at the College of Architecture at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln
HDR Pavilion at the College of Architecture at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln
A Living Laboratory for Mass Timber Education
Think Wood originally profiled the addition, which connects three buildings in the campus’s Architecture Hall complex, when it was under construction. The University of Nebraska requested a mass timber building upfront due to the material’s sustainability and carbon reduction, but the CLT construction also provides a “living laboratory” with tours for students and classes related to mass timber.
“There seems to be this uncanny love for the building,” NADAAA Design Principal Nader Tehrani says. Tehrani notes that wood construction is not a novelty as the 1895 University Library—which forms a key part of the Architecture Hall complex—uses 19th century timber construction with masonry bearing walls. “I think the school’s appreciation of its uses and its character comes in part because it extends that legacy,” he says. “I’m convinced that we were inheritors of the CLT agenda, not the makers of that agenda.”
HDR Pavilion at the College of Architecture at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln
HDR Pavilion at the College of Architecture at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln
And the building will continue to evolve through its occupancy. “The terrace on top will be completed by [Professor] Jeff [Day] and his student team,” Tehrani says. “We designed a building as an infrastructure for them to intervene on, and then they include us in the crits and review process to make sure that it doesn’t replicate our building, but it extends it in a different and creative light.”
HDR Principal-in-Charge Tom Trenolone taught in the building during the first semester, sharing a studio space with Jeff Day. Trenolone recalls being in the building on a Saturday and observing its function as a recruiting tool for students showing their parents around. “The kids would start telling the story about what mass timber does and why we should be doing more, and the benefits of carbon storage,” Trenolone says.
Trenolone notes that Tehrani refers to the project as a very humble, hardworking building. “It’s very Nebraska in the way that it does things,” Trenolone says. “Because we’re not very flashy; we’re usually very efficient about what we do.” That efficiency extended to the project’s speedy construction timeline, with the framing assembled at a rate of one floor per week. In this very straightforward context, the new HDR Pavilion at the College of Architecture at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln seems to fit right in.
