Albright College

Project Description

Albright College’s Roessner Hall is a renovation and addition to the existing Rockland Hall. Rockland, once a commercial office building, now houses classrooms, offices, and a large atrium lounge space, which activates both the building and the main campus thoroughfare on which it sits.

Awards

  • AIA Eastern Pennsylvania Award of Merit – 2014

Project Details

“Albright is a nationally ranked, private college with a rigorous liberal arts curriculum with an interdisciplinary focus. The College’s hallmarks are connecting fields of learning, collaborative teaching and learning, and a flexible curriculum that allows students to create an individualized education. Albright College enrolls 1,650 undergraduates in traditional programs, and another 600 adult students in accelerated degree and graduate programs.

The College built Rockland Professional…

“Albright is a nationally ranked, private college with a rigorous liberal arts curriculum with an interdisciplinary focus. The College’s hallmarks are connecting fields of learning, collaborative teaching and learning, and a flexible curriculum that allows students to create an individualized education. Albright College enrolls 1,650 undergraduates in traditional programs, and another 600 adult students in accelerated degree and graduate programs.

The College built Rockland Professional Center in 1988 to generate revenue from a variety of commercial office tenants. However, the College wished to transform Rockland Professional Center into a modern, technologically advanced academic facility.

The new facility, Roessner Hall Center for Civic, Business and Global Leadership, opened for the fall 2014 semester. The new building houses classrooms, administrative offices, and a large atrium lounge space. Importantly, the building will help to consolidate Albright’s departments of Economics, Business, Accounting, Political Science, and their Accelerated Degree Program. The building will also house the department of Community and Civic Engagement. In their new location, these departments will benefit from shared facilities and group learning spaces which will promote interdisciplinary collaboration. This focus is directly related to the institution’s mission and master plan, as Albright desires to graduate its students with a deeper appreciation of the meaning and importance of citizenship.

The addition of modern educational facilities provides significantly upgraded space for all daytime classes for the Accounting, Economics and Business, and Political Science departments, and for evening outreach and instruction by the Accelerated Degree Programs and the Center for Excellence in Local Government. Consolidating related department classroom demands into a single, integrated facility creates a hub for each of these departments and a sense of ownership, allowing faculty members and administrators to shape and maintain the spaces they need to be most effective for students.

Faculty offices provide truly active and collaborative learning opportunities located strategically throughout Roessner Hall. These spaces are active learning areas equipped with technology that allows for collaborative, investigative learning. Promoting increased interaction between students and faculty, break-out spaces are located near faculty offices and incorporate transparency and natural light that permeates both areas.

Supplemental spaces reflect the evolution of teaching and learning styles by providing environments that promote collaborative learning, group study, and informal gathering. These spaces include the forum, a central airy hub for interaction and informal gathering, break-out spaces around classrooms to allow for intimate interaction, a global media lounge to encourage discourse and debate, and a coffee and snack bar.

Architecturally, the building’s new transparencies (both at the street front and within interior spaces) help to bring this once-dated building into the 21st century.  Glass and polycarbonate walls promote daylight infiltration as well as cultural transparency, and the now-exposed circulation systems draw students further into the space, creating opportunities for shared learning.”

Award AIA Eastern Pennsylvania Award of Merit – 2014

Project Albright College: Roessner Hall

Testimonial

Title 2014 AIA Eastern PA Jury

“

The project provides multiple lessons about giving old buildings new life while addressing contemporary needs for contemporary and sustainable urban living. The skillfully detailed atrium lounge space is an exterior beacon that floods the interior with light. The new interior spaces are bright and have a loft-like feel; a light touch of Silicon-Valley-type collaborative space. This looks like a fun, cool place to study and work.

”