With the addition of the Alferio Center, a sheltered space between the existing Campus buildings and the new addition was formed. The challenge was to provide a dynamic outdoor space for not only the business school, but all the university students, with an overlaid foot-traffic pattern and constraints on sunlight and space.

The space became divided into “slices.” The courtyard itself is actually a collection of oversized, multi-use paths that pivot like spokes on the prominent corner of the new building. One path travels directly to the doors of Park hall, the second offers tables for gathering under sky, and the third passes under the overhang of the new Alferio Center. Because the courtyard is adjacent to a university WiFi Hotspot, allowing for wireless internet access outdoors, oversize LCD panels adorn the walls like artwork along this colonnade to exhibit the business school’s most valuable commodity: information.

Slices of vegetation, such as ornamental grasses, lining the second path entice with a sense of enclosure to the gathering space. The end-cap slice is thickly planted and contains a grove of trees with loose canopies that offer to screen out campus distractions without blocking light.

The pivot point of the building is reinforced through enlarging ring fragments of seat-walls that intersect lawn and path areas. Where the walls intersect with the paths, the graphic line of the wall is transferred to the ground plane through the use of pavers. Students are welcome to use the walls and lawns for less studious gatherings as well.