Expansion
Student Union Expansion
The New Student Union is a premiere facility providing students and visitors with 252,000 square feet of new and remodeled space. This project began in it's inception more than 5 years ago and was supported by students, ASBSU, faculty and staff. Construction began in August 2007 and was completed in August 2009.
New features and services in your New Student Union include:
Now Open:
- Boise River Café Dining Hall
- 10,000 square foot new Simplot Ballroom
- New ASBSU Senate & Student Organization Suite
- New ASBSU Executive Offices
- Pulse Student Radio Production Studio
- New Student and Family Programs Office Suite
- New Campus Services and Student Union Administrative Office Suite
- Bronco Card Office
- Expanded Bookstore and Bronco Shop
- Remodeled Games Center
- New Bronco Bathrooms
- New Bronco Gallery and Frame Shop
- Remodeled Bronco Express - Mail Services and Web Orders
- Three new meeting rooms
- Women's Center - New home on the second floor
- Remodeled Cultural Center
- New Food Court Deli - University Bread Company
- New Grill Menu and Mai Thai Menu
- New Retail Convenience Store - C3
- New Lounges and Study Space
- Veterans Memorial
Thanks to the project being completed under budget there are a few upgrades coming Fall Semester 2009
- New Coffee Bar and Retail Food Court Lobby
- Additional Lounge and Study Space Furniture
SUB Expansion Project Vision Statement
February 24, 2006
Vision Statement categories have equal importance and are listed in alphabetical order.
The redesigned SUB will be a project that addresses the following goals:
Accessibility:
- Considers and accommodates pedestrian flow through and around the student union, with wide corridors that resemble a main street, and provide visual and physical access to building functions and programs.
- Gives people options to move rapidly through the building, or to linger and use programs and services found along the circulation spines.
Aesthetics:
- Respects its campus context.
- Connects the indoors and outdoors through incorporation of large glass areas.
- Projects a sense of uniformity both inside and outside.
- Utilizes monumental stairs as a focal point to connect program activities on different floors.
- Plans integrated locations for announcements and marketing material.
Ballroom & Meeting Rooms:
- Creates a grand multi-purpose ballroom that supports a variety of entertainment and academic events with good acoustics, technologically modern infrastructure, and spacious pre-function accommodations.
- Develops a suite of ballroom and meeting spaces with enough flexibility, infrastructure, and support space for university conference events.
Budget:
- Balances the program and desired quality level with the established budget.
Campus Culture:
- Recognizes the SUB as the center of student life, providing places to socialize, study, learn and "see and be seen."
- Promotes the University's goal of a pedestrian campus.
- Showcases the SUB and the University to prospective students and community visitors.
Character & Image:
- Highlights the student union in a way that supports Boise State University as a first class research institution, through the use of cutting edge and high tech architectural expressions.
- Addresses the unique quality of the region through the use of materials, forms and massing.
- Creates a sense of whimsy and invite while commanding a strong presence as a campus destination.
Connections to Campus:
- Plans visible, prominent entries that connect with major campus pathways.
- Blurs the distinction between interior and exterior spaces, and provides opportunities for extending student programs to the outdoors.
Dining Services:
- Offers venues that respond to current food preferences.
- Has sufficient capacity for current and projected retail and meal plan participation.
- Provides attractive and inviting settings for all dining experiences, including meeting rooms, ballrooms, outdoor space, retail outlets, and board dining.
Interiors:
- Is inviting and welcoming, with comfortable furnishings.
- Celebrates views while improving daylighting, in locations where the most building users will benefit.
- Promotes acoustical separation, particularly in meeting rooms and student activity areas.
- Replaces floor coverings as required.
- Features high quality, contemporary materials and creative, functional, and adjustable lighting.
- Enhances study areas with comfortable and flexible furnishings conducive to individual or group study.
Life Cycle Costs:
- Utilizes an efficient environmental control system.
- Controls heat and cooling loss through all building openings.
Maintenance:
- Incorporates durable, low-maintenance interior finishes.
- Is efficient to clean and maintain.
Multi-Purpose:
- Incorporates flexibility through the use of multifunctional spaces and movable furniture.
- Recognizes the differing requirements of day and nighttime functions.
Operations:
- Ensures that essential building operations are maintained during construction.
- Provides an appropriately-sized dock with minimized visual impact, and convenient access from both the building interior and the surrounding campus.
- Creates 24-hour access zones within the building.
- Contains appropriately-sized mechanical, electrical, and tele-data spaces. Allow for eventual connection to the campus geothermal system.
Planning:
- Facilitates visual access to programs and services.
- Integrates high-visibility program elements with major building pathways.
- Allows for program growth, while maximizing use of the building's existing space.
- Establishes clear, comprehensible circulation and wayfinding.
Programs:
- Develops adjacencies of similar programs in a way that allows common reception and work spaces.
- Promotes programs through increased visibility to circulation pathways.
- Increases the number and flexibility of meeting rooms.
- Locates information services in a prominent and visible area of the building that can handle large numbers of users.
- Creates a vibrant mix of programs and services that promote campus community and growth.
Retail:
- Increases bookstore capacity.
- Promotes retail success through responsiveness to campus community needs and proper retail placement.
Safety:
- Improves safety through sensitive lighting design on the interior and exterior, while accentuating the building exterior.
Sustainability:
- Incorporates the principles of sustainable design found in the LEED guidelines in its architecture, building systems, landscaping, energy sources, and user accommodations, in order to reduce energy usage and improve the comfort of building occupants.
- Offers the campus population the opportunity to take personal responsibility in sustainable living through such options as recycling, using public transportation, and commuter biking.
Symbolism:
- Tastefully remembers and memorializes, through architectural elements, concepts and ideas valued by the campus population such as: international diversity, service to country, campus history, and Boise State University traditions.
Technology:
- Incorporates current technology, and provides flexible infrastructure for future technology, throughout the building, with particular focus on gathering spaces and student orgs areas. Infrastructure must appear seamless with the building design.
