Washington University reaps significant benefits from Buro Happold’s innovative design

Buro Happold

23/11/2011 Written by: John Rozeluk and Jodi Christopher No comments

Buro Happold is the lead engineer in the design phases for the Olin Business School, a 147,000 square foot faculty and teaching education building on the Washington University campus in St. Louis, Missouri. Considering itself an ‘institution of leaders’, Olin Business School offers one of the top BSBA and MBA programs in the nation.

A key feature of the project is a three story forum and atrium that acts as the activity hub for the new business school. The space will be conditioned using a mixed mode system of radiant floors and displacement ventilation distributed at low level. High level stratified air will be exhausted from the atrium and used in a total heat recovery process to precondition the building ventilation air. In addition, Buro Happold’s fire engineering group is using extensive CFD modeling and egress modeling to design a passive smoke evacuation system for the atrium. The passive system will meet all code requirements for smoke evacuation while saving the owner approximately $700,000 by eliminating costly mechanical equipment and emergency generators from the project scope. The project intends to pursue a LEED Silver target.