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Architects: Anderson Mason Dale Architects, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson
- Area: 87000 ft²
- Year: 2012
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Photographs:Nic Lehoux
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Architect of Record: Anderson Mason Dale Architects
Text description provided by the architects. Marquez Hall, the home of the Petroleum Engineering Department at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado, is designed to reflect the changing role of energy from petroleum to renewables. The 87,000-square-foot facility accommodates the growing needs of the distinguished engineering program while creating a gateway to a new Earth Science Quad.
Forming an edge of a pedestrian walkway that connects two main quadrangles, the siting enhances the extraordinary views of the surrounding mountains. The L-shaped plan defines a new courtyard activated with custom designed seating to encourage interaction.
The floor plan is comprised of three bars of program. The northern bar houses a combination of graduate and undergraduate laboratories, a 4-D visualization classroom, and a drilling simulator room. The southern bar holds offices and support spaces to enhance interaction between students, faculty, and research teams. The southeastern wing provides a lecture hall and four levels of smart classrooms and seminar rooms.
The transparent exhibition space and entrance lobby are positioned along Cheyenne Way, a prominent campus thoroughfare. Structurally glazed glass walls hang from the 60-foot cantilevered roof. A series of layers—constructed of glass curtain wall, aluminum plate, and terra cotta cladding—express the program. Metal louvers shade the interior spaces, allowing views of the distant buttes from classroom and laboratory spaces.
Marquez Hall reinforces Colorado School of Mine’s vision for the future by looking to the user, to the campus, and to the community to achieve an architectural vocabulary that reflects the school’s innovative research and programs.
