UMass Lowell South Campus Garage

Design and construction phase services for a 760 parking space garage at the river gateway approach to the South Campus. The garage was conceived as a campus connector, linking the main upper and lower campuses in the building’s great stair hall.

While providing much needed parking, the new garage also serves an experiential purpose on South Campus–to enhance current and future pedestrian networks and to create a befitting introduction to the Campus from the west. To that end, the design aesthetic–in particular the architecture of the north end of the structure along Broadway, visible from much of South Campus and the historic Allen House, and nearest campus activity–refers to the language of the campus architecture rather than utilitarian infrastructure.

The glass curtain wall enclosed Stair Hall at the north end of the site links the upper (main) campus with the lower (riverside) campus, as well as connects the parking garage to the campus. The Stair Hall is an unexpected feature of the garage. It provides a people-oriented, human-scaled space, animated with natural light by day, glowing as a soft lantern at night. Accent colors and a refined level of detail, beyond the scale of the parking garage, are introduced at the Stair Hall. The Hall is a collector of pedestrian movement, visible from inside the parking decks, acting as a way-finding device that improves the user’s experience.