Created as an unusual marriage of the big-city branches of two Big Ten research institutions, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis in recent years has evolved far past branch-campus status.

Enrollment, now at about 28,500, ranks IUPUI as the state's third-largest campus. An increasing amount of research takes place there, particularly at the Indiana University School of Medicine.

IUPUI also has become a national hub for communication technologies and Internet traffic. The institution has gained a reputation for its creative approaches to meeting the unique needs of urban commuter students. It's even taking steps beyond commuter status by adding on-campus student housing.

These and other changes are reflected in a flurry of construction transforming the 500-acre downtown campus. Among the projects are two wrapping up early this year. One is a large building at the eastern main entrance to the campus that will host instructional facilities as well as computing and communications operations. The other is IUPUI's first major residential development, a cluster of nine apartment buildings on the west edge of campus.

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Informatics and Communications Technology Complex

Nearly complete is the 208,316-sq.-ft. Informatics and Communications Technology Complex. The $32.1 million project appears to be a single, large building, but in reality it's two buildings, each sporting its own design and construction characteristics.

Those involved with the project refer to the two halves as the Classroom Academic Building and the Communications Technology Center.

"They were originally two separate buildings with two separate budgets," said Chuck Bauer, senior associate at Indianapolis-based Ratio Architects, the project's architect of record. "The CTC building was designed to stand alone."

Robert A.M. Stern Architects of New York was the design architect. Keeping the projects separate initially was necessary as the university navigated the sometimes tricky waters of university facility planning and budgeting, but the two were made one when it became clear that their schedules could coincide.

Construction began in October 2002.

The CAB will house the departments of informatics, journalism and music. The first three floors will include classrooms, computer labs, digital music labs, music practice space and a lecture hall that will double as a 200-seat performance hall.
Floors four and five will house offices for the three departments.

The CTC side of the complex will house much of the campus' technological backbone along with a network-operations center. The university's information-technology services will be based in the CTC, along with related departments, training rooms and a university call center.

The machine rooms hosting IT equipment will be on the lower level, while the upper floors will contain three pervasive technology laboratories that will conduct research on advanced telecommunications and other topics.

Limestone veneer and glass curtain wall clad the complex, which also features balconies off some of the classrooms, fourth-floor terraces and a central light shaft connecting the two sides and illuminated by a large skylight.

Building the complex has posed multiple challenges for general contractor Hunt Construction of Indianapolis, said project manager Robert Wooten. "Part of the challenge is that this is like two separate buildings, with one side being a raised-floor system," he added.

Wooten said one bump on the road was keeping the complex as clean and dust-free as it needed to be. It took extra cleaning and damp-mopping of concrete before flooring was installed to protect the sensitive technology to be brought in later, he added.

Also, "the building has a skylight in the middle and it took quite a while to work out the details, which left me with a big hole in the top of the building that had to be covered," Wooten said.

One other issue: The university named different prime contractors for such aspects as mechanical and electrical work, and called on Hunt to coordinate the efforts.

It was tricky handling a variety of issues over which Hunt had no control, such as the halting progress of running steam and chilled-water lines to the building, Wooten said. "It took two to three months to get resolved," he added. "I couldn't have traffic to the east side of the building while that ditch lay open."

And then there was a rough winter. The Indianapolis area recorded an unusually high level of precipitation, much of it in the form of snow. "It delayed construction quite a bit," Wooten said. "We expedited what we could, but we're probably a month or two behind."

Bill Browne, president of Ratio Architects, said another problem came up because IUPUI's master plan envisions a quadrangle at the eastern edge of campus, with the new complex in the northeast corner. Directly to the south is a relatively new School of Law building named Inlow Hall.

"We could not be any taller than the law school, and we had an additional floor that we needed to incorporate," Browne said.

Part of the solution was to slim down the interstitial space between the building's levels. Bauer said much of the complex is built with just 12 in. of interstitial space, less than half of what often can be found in this type of building. "We ended up with an approximate net savings of about 4 ft.," he added.

That solution, however, created additional challenges for the contractors erecting the building and hanging the mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems that typically run through interstitial space. "In some places there was just about enough space to get the ductwork in but in some cases we had to lower the ceiling," Wooten said. "In some places we had to do some extensive reworking of the piping to get it above the ceiling."

On the CTC side, the entire building was designed with a raised-flooring system to accommodate the ubiquitous technology. Running through the raised-floor system is computer cabling, but also electrical systems and ductwork that otherwise would have had to hang in the cramped interstitial space.

Because the complex houses the School of Music, acoustics were an important consideration in some rooms. The CAB building features seven modular practice rooms, premanufactured offsite before being installed in the building. In larger rehearsal rooms an extra, hard drywall ceiling was installed above the regular ceiling for sound deadening, Wooten said.

In spite of weather delays, the building will be ready well before the start of the fall semester, when classes are first schedule to meet there.

Student Housing

IUPUI's master plan envisions residential development on the west side of campus, along the White River. Until now, the mostly commuter campus has offered only a small residence hall and a limited number of graduate-student townhomes.

Browne, whose Ratio Architects designed IUPUI's new $40 million student-housing complex, said university officials realized they must offer more housing options as the campus grows to lure more top-notch, out-of-town students.

Ratio created a complex of nine apartment buildings that the university refers to as "houses," situated in three groups or "neighborhoods." The 339 fully furnished apartments are unlike what most people might think of as campus housing, according to Tom Cheesman, Ratio's associate principal overseeing the project.

"These are basically designed to be competitive with market-rate units," he said, offering dishwashers, refrigerators with ice makers, broadband Internet, individual heating/cooling systems and either stackable or full-size washers and dryers in each unit.

Cheesman said 99 apartments offer four bedrooms and two baths, while 148 have two bedrooms and two baths. Another nine feature two bedrooms and one bath, 66 have one bedroom and one bath, and 17 resident-assistant units also offer one bedroom and one bath.

Total capacity of the apartment complex is 793 people, and more could follow in the future.

The "houses" are three and four stories high, and the plan is to group students in the houses by such common interests as majors, sports or social connections.

"One of the reasons we tried to get to three- and four-story buildings was to get some height so that the upper units could look out over the river," Browne said. Some apartments also enjoy a view of the Indianapolis downtown skyline. The apartments are served by total of 547 parking spaces, some on a nearby parking deck and many interspersed amid the units to avoid the appearance of housing surrounded by a sea of cars.

The buildings sport a distinctly residential feel, with interior corridors, brick and limestone cladding, and sloped, standing-seam metal roofing.

As with the Informatics and Communications Technology Complex project across campus, construction of the new student housing was greatly impacted by the harsh winter of 2002-2003. The weather was especially troublesome because of delays in getting the project started, said John Grosvenor, project manager for general contractor F.A. Wilhelm Construction Co. of Indianapolis.

"We were originally planned to start construction in August 2002, and we didn't actually start until the beginning of December," he added. "The whole project was getting out of the ground in the dead of winter." Preventing a summer start were design and bid-related delays and approvals caused in part by value engineering.

To make matters worse, there also were delays in a separate bid package for site preparation. Work that was to have been well under way when Wilhelm started was behind schedule.

With the project starting a few months late, it was obvious that all nine buildings could not be completed by the original finish date of August 2003. So Wilhelm focused particular attention framing one neighborhood of three, continuing foundation work on the other six but holding off on further work until it got a handle on the first three.

Other time-saving methods were employed by plumbing and electrical contractors.
"They used flexible Pex piping on the plumbing instead of PVC," Grosvenor said. "It was part of the value engineering to keep material costs and labor down."

Despite the delays in starting construction, three of the buildings were finished and turned over by the start of school in August, Grosvenor said.

Three more buildings were turned over to the client the day before Christmas, before the start of the second semester. Grosvenor said the remaining three were on-track for completion in late February.