CLC faces busy year ahead Shuttle free for ND , small cost for SMC

W hen th e S choo l of A rchitecture needed to reno ­ vate their own building, they im m e d ia te ly tu rn e d to P ro fe s s o r T h o m a s G o rdon Smith, chairm an of the school, to design the changes. “T he e n t i r e b u ild in g is essentially being gutted," said Professor Smith, “in order to a llow us to b e s t u tiliz e th e overall structure of the build­ ing.” Professor Smith, along w ith E lle rb e B e c k e tt A r­ ch itec ts, a firm th a t has d e ­ s ig n e d m any of th e n e w e r building on cam pus, c rea ted the architectural plans for this 78 year-old building. The in te rio r of the 50,000 square-foot building will be al­ m ost com pletely dem olished, leaving the two-story foyer the only recogn izab le fea tu re to remain. F u r th e rm o re , a 1 5 ,0 0 0 sq u a re -fo o t add itio n will be m ade on the w est side of the building, in order to accom o­ date new classrooms, new ad­ ministrative offices, and a new lecture hall. Finally, the front steps will be restored to their o rig in a l lim e s to n e su r fa c e , compared to the m arble-granite s ta ir s th a t w ere b u ilt in 19 6 0 . In a ll, th e p ro je c t should cost around $12 million and shou ld be com pleted in December 1996. The job was contracted out to Calumet Con­ struction. “This will be the first major renovation for the Architecture Building since 1963-64,” com­ mented Mike Smith, the direc­ tor of facilities engineering at Notre Dame, “since the build­ ing w as co n v erted from the LeMonnier Library to the Ar­ chitecture Building.” The con­ version was m ade due to the construction of the H esburgh L ib ra ry in 1 9 6 4 , le a v in g LeMonnier open for classroom use. Since it had been a library, the Architecture Building ca r­ ried a few nuances commonly found in libraries. For instance, the basem ent included num erous stories of six-foot concre te s tacks th a t h a d h o u se d th o u s a n d s of books, but had to be worked a ro u n d by th e A rc h ite c tu re School. These stacks w ere not only troubling to the students and faculty, bu t they also tu rn ed out to be a fire code violation and needed to be removed. In ad d itio n , the in te r io r of the b u ild ing w as not c re a te d to house classroom s, so the e r ­ g o n o m ics of th e b u ild in g