University of Missouri - Kansas City

Bloch Executive Hall

An innovative, interdisciplinary business school hub encouraging innovation, entrepreneurship, and design thinking

Information

Location Kansas City, Missouri
Size 68,000 SF
Completion 2013
Services Architecture
Project Type Business Schools
Certification LEED Gold

BNIM worked in collaboration with Moore Ruble Yudell and the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) to design a new building for Henry W. Bloch School of Management. The design of the 68,000+ square foot Henry W. Bloch Executive Hall for Entrepreneurship and Innovation is intentionally simple and elegant. The building provides new spaces to meet the demands of an increased student population, address the specialized needs of entrepreneurial education programs, and serve the growing executive education programs and need for teaching spaces for undergraduate and graduate programs of the Bloch School. Bloch Executive Hall also serves as a social hub for students on campus, providing flexible new spaces for increased student collaboration and engagement. The facility includes a 200-seat auditorium, multiple flexible and active learning classrooms, seminar rooms, a finance lab, and faculty offices. The upper three floors are connected by an open, light-filled lobby that includes an amphitheater which serves as an important student gathering area.

Impact + Innovation

The design team gave much thought and consideration to the vision for this new building. The Bloch School has embraced active learning styles of teaching, group teaching methods, and design-based thinking and learning. In addition, the building is designed to house a design-led innovation laboratory, space for prototyping entrepreneurial concepts, and incubator space for creating new companies. In the spirit of Henry Bloch and entrepreneurialism, the new building was designed as a fresh, progressive and a step into the future. The state-of-the-art building provided an innovative model for business schools across the country and globally to support the future of entrepreneurship education. Bloch Hall is both a place and a portal. It utilizes space very efficiently to serve the programmatic needs of the school and the connectivity needs of the campus. Curved forms in the heart of the building juxtapose the straight lines of the building’s exterior form. The amphitheater provides a venue for informal student gathering as well as for teaching and major school gatherings. The atrium serves as public passage between the Bloch School and the Student Union and indoor gathering place.

Process

Dr. Teng-Kee Tan, then dean of the Bloch School of Management, expressed an idea in the early stages of design that shaped the team’s process and the final design: The path of innovation is never a straight line. The design process, too, was not a straight line. It was iterative and interactive, involving UMKC, BNIM, MRY, JE Dunn and the larger team of collaborators. The design of the new building itself became an entrepreneurial and innovative exercise, where the collaborative, interdisciplinary teaching and learning taking place within the spaces were a continuum of the design process. It was clearly articulated during the vision process for Bloch Hall that the new building would be a good steward of human health, nature and the economic resources of the university, achieving a balance among these triple-bottom-line considerations. Collaboration, as a key element of the design process, created an open dialogue among all team members that shepherded these and other significant goals through design iterations, rigorous testing and analysis, negotiations and, finally, to successful execution. The Bloch Executive Hall was completed from design through construction on a fast-track schedule within a 24-month period.

Sustainability

Summary of energy and carbon reduction strategies: An under-floor air distribution (displacement air) system improves thermal comfort because the supply air is delivered at a more comfortable temperature (64 degrees vs. 55 degrees when cooling is required for instance) and at a lower velocity.
Thermal mass from cast-in-place concrete structure and exposed interior wythe of insulated precast concrete walls helps to even out temperature fluctuations within the building.
Insulated precast concrete walls with unique terra cotta exterior skin provide U-0.048 for approximately 53% of the overall wall area.
A high performance curtain wall system uses “Low E” double pane insulated glass with argon gas ( U-0.36, SHGC – 0.30) for 47% of exterior wall area.
Materials: use of recycled materials in as many products as possible such as recycled glass countertops fabricated from recycled glass collected locally; all wood is FSC certified; limestone reclaimed from site retaining walls repurposed for use as limestone seating benches around the exterior of the building.
The building uses a white TPO roof with a vegetated green roof on Level 4. This “cool roof” reflects significantly more sunlight and absorbs less heat than traditional dark-colored roofs, resulting in reduced building heat-gain, energy savings during times of the year that require air-conditioning, and extended service life of the roof.
Skylights and ample glazing to provide daylight to the building along with daylight sensors and controls to limit the need for lights during daylight hours.
Efficient plumbing fixtures save 42.14% compared to the LEED 2009 baseline.
Monitoring capabilities were added to mechanical systems to allow the measurement of energy usage for life of building:
82.9 kBtu/SF/year predicted EUI excluding on-site renewable energy contribution
36% regional reduction per Energy Star Target Finder compared to ASHRAE 90.1, 2007 (60% reduction compared to Architecture 2030 Challenge Interim Code Equivalents)
The site design incorporates subtle strategies to treat stormwater without creating large rain basins that would distract from the formal design aesthetic. Rain basins are incorporated throughout the groundcover and planting beds to clean runoff and direct it to storage zones underneath the project parking lots.
In addition to the aesthetic benefits the green roof provides to the upper floor offices and outdoor terrace, it also helps to reduce the stormwater volume leaving the roof.
100% precipitation managed on site 0 % waste water reused on site 1.65 Gallons/SF/year predicted annual regulated potable water use 42% regulated potable water reduction from baseline

People

Team

Steve McDowell
John Collier
Sam De Jong
Greg Sheldon
Casey Cassias
Hans Nettelblad
Beena Ramaswami
Gretchen Holy
Aaron Ross
Chadd Woodall
Kristin Long
Peter Hystead

Client

University of Missouri - Kansas City

Collaborators

Moore Ruble Yudell

When UMKC was going to build Bloch Hall, I knew the team that I wanted to design the building. BNIM has proven that they can bring about great things for arts and education.

Henry Bloch, Founder, H&R Block

We are now positioned to take the University to another level and contribute to the prosperity of this region in ways that we have not been able to before. This building is about educating students of the future. It is designed to heighten exchange between students and faculty to levels that we have never experienced before. These students will learn the right way. With this new asset, we can be a leader and beyond.

Chancellor Leo Morton, at Media Preview Day

We recognize the value of experiential learning but we’ve been limited due to the facilities – we need to be in an environment with adaptability and flexibility to accommodate that kind of an experience. This building does that. We are extremely excited. I have not run into a student that didn’t say – ‘I hope my class is in the new building.’ It showcases what the Bloch School is all about.

Dave Donnelly, Acting Dean, at Media Preview Day