Lazaridis Hall, Wilfrid Laurier University

Project Details

Project Description

Lazaridis Hall is the new gateway and signature building at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, in the heart of Canada’s high tech corridor. It houses the School of Business and Economics (SBE), the Department of Mathematics and state-of-the-art incubator space to promote collaborative research between the university and community.

The design shifts the built form of the university from a functionalist campus of utilitarian structures to an open, academic crossroads centered around a large skylit quadrangle accessible to the community. The building is conceived as a series of stacked and intersecting blocks. An architecture of shifting floor plates, cantilevered and curvilinear moves provides program legibility and identity.

With a construction budget of only CDN $66.5M, (US$52M), Lazaridis Hall employs economical construction techniques and a simple material palette of zinc panels, phenolic wood and glass. A concealed hybrid steel and concrete structure allows for a calm, minimal, open presentation of space. An architectural language of clearly expressed volumes articulated both outside and indoors makes for seamless transition, supported by extending soffit and surface materials across the threshold. An array of sustainable features has the building on track for LEED Gold certification.

The program features a 1000-seat auditorium with the acoustic and sightline characteristics of Diamond Schmitt’s performing arts centres; it also functions as a 400-seat lecture hall. A ‘floating’ 300-seat elliptical lecture hall located in a cantilevered drum sits above the at-grade café. A lightweight freeform glass structure with 40 percent frit spans the entire 140-foot by 70-foot atrium.

CNC custom form acoustic partitions have 250,000 circular openings ranging from 4-12mm diameter to modulate acoustics in classrooms and the atrium. Active Learning Classrooms allow the faculty to test new pedagogies. There are 240 faculty offices interspersed with classrooms and all have access to daylight and yet the building has only a 20 percent window-to-wall ratio.

Fully glazed student clubs and café on the ground floor provide midblock connection with the street which anticipates future development of this new precinct across University Ave. from the main campus.

Versatile and generously spaced, Lazaridis Hall provides room to think and collaborate and invites the wider community to connect.