The "Center of Centers"

Architects Design Our “Center of Centers”

By far, most of the space in our new building is dedicated to new classrooms and to student spaces such as meeting rooms and lounges. We have reserved parts of one level to office space. We’re dedicating part of this office space to our “centers” – sort of a “center” of “centers” so to speak. By “center,” we are referring to things such as our newly established Center for Entrepreneurial Excellence, our Huntsman Scholar program, and programs we envision for the future such as a Center for Global Engagement and, possibly, a Covey Center for Leadership.

We want to design an office layout that will be flexible and will allow us to meet changing needs. And yet, at the same time, we want to offer distinct entrance areas for each center. Our latest plan would make it so you could come to a common reception desk for all the centers and then walk down a hallway off of which the open office areas for each of the centers will be located. Behind those open office areas will be a row of offices that will house the staff for the centers. That row of offices will not be walled off into separate sections but open to another common hallway that will connect to the open office areas. The centers will have up to four common conference rooms to share off the main hallway. (See drawing below.)

We need to be flexible because some centers might need a lot of people here on campus to function effectively and other centers might be connected to other researchers or staff around the world. They will all have different space needs and those needs will probably change as the school progresses. We’ve come up with a design that will allow them to share resources and space effectively.