Best Higher Education/Research - University of Kansas Capitol Federal Hall

Capitol Federal Hall at the University of Kansas is a 167,000-sq-ft building that houses the university’s School of Business. It rises four floors above grade and is clad in precast concrete, weathered-steel and high-performance glazing. Materials were carefully curated to ensure that the new building was both forward thinking and contextually sensitive. Its centerpiece is a four-story atrium with a sculptural stair that serves as the building’s primary means of circulation.

A 350-seat auditorium also can be used as a tornado shelter to house the building’s entire population. The windowless structure was clad in weathered steel and covered with a planted red-sedum roof, in keeping with a long-standing campus tradition of red roofs.

The interior of the main building was designed to serve a diverse group of faculty with widely different teaching styles. The 20 classrooms are arranged so that each can easily be realigned for instructional needs. The layouts include large and small lecture rooms, collaborative team rooms and larger-lecture more