New Student Apartment Living
IMEG provided engineering design services for a new $86 million, 850-bed student apartment complex on a five-acre tract near State Street on Purdue’s main campus. This four-story building, called Aspire at Discovery Park, features apartment-style student rooms, retail at the street level, community spaces, and outdoor living space. This new student housing facility contains studio, two-bedroom, and four-bedroom apartment styles.
The development is the first of many in Purdue Research Foundation’s $1 billion redevelopment of a 450-acre section of campus to be called the Discovery Park District. Systems are being designed to meet efficiency goals for building envelope performance, overall energy use, and material management.
The complex consists of three separate buildings that each presented unique structural challenges that IMEG overcame with the design and construction team. Building A is the roughly 100,000 SF mixed use building and has a layout similar to a donut to maximum the number of units on site. This building is 3 stories of wood framing support on a single story steel framed podium structure comprised of composite steel beams with concrete on steel deck and strategically placed columns throughout retail and community space. The building space along with the mix of unit types required some unique steel framing layout and detailing. IMEG coordinated with the other members of the design and construction teams to balance the structural needs, provide cost effective detailing that met the needs of the program and desired ceiling heights.
The two other buildings are four story wood framed structures with steel beam transfers at open areas and various floor plan offsets. All three buildings have some full height brick cladding for some portion of the exterior. Wood shrinkage is a critical aspect of design when detailing wood framed buildings. IMEG studied the wood shrinkage along brick expansion guide the decision to vertically support the brick veneer at each level to minimize the effects of movement around the openings through the brick cladding.
