KJWW Engineering Consultants provided mechanical, electrical, structural and technology designs for the University of Iowa’s Adler Hall. This new classroom building houses the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, the Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature, and The Daily Iowan. The three-story, 65,000 SF structure, contains 14 classrooms, as well as broadcast studios, laboratories, offices, meeting spaces and a newspaper office.
Adler Hall features a tiered classroom for film screenings and technological classrooms designed to accommodate the increasing enrollments in the cinema program, particularly in film and video editing. A second-floor enclosed skywalk provides ready access to the film production studios of the Becker Communication Studies Building.
One of the biggest challenges with the Adler Building was the design of the smoke evacuation system. KJWW to worked closely with the architect to find acceptable locations to introduce large quantities of make-up air and exhaust large quantities without these services being obvious to an occupant in the three-story atrium. We used large supply air plenums above the perforated metal ceilings for makeup air on ground floor, and hid the exhaust inlets above atrium “bridges” on the third floor.
Other energy-saving or “green” concepts featured in Adler Hall:
- Total energy recovery heat wheel on the air-handling system
- Occupancy sensor control of lights and space air supply
- Variable-speed drives on the air-handling unit fans for capacity control
- Variable speed drives on the chilled and heating water pumps for capacity control
- Daylight controls for lighting in the atrium.