User:Eccekevin/Walsh Family Hall of Architecture

The School of Architecture is housed in the Walsh Family Hall of Architecture. Construction started on 31 October 2016 and was completed in January 2019, and the 110,000-square-foot building was designed by John Simpson, the structural engineering done by Thornton Tomasetti and built by the Walsh Group. It was named after a $33 million donation by Matthew Walsh. The architecture style is New Classicism and New Urbanism, of which John Simpson is a major figure having won the school's own Driehaus Architecture Prize, and is inspired by the classical elements taught in the École des Beaux-Arts. According to these principles, the building is spartan and durable in its construction materials to maximize functionality, durability, and economy, while having more elaborate and decorated styles in the main entrance, hall of casts, auditoriums and the library. It was built in the southern side of campus, in the new arts district, close to the O’Neill Hall, the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, Charles B. Hayes Family Sculpture Park and the planned Raclin Murphy Museum of Art. The building is centered around a court and provides architecture studios in a two-story wing along the north; a library on the east; with an auditorium and exhibition galleries along the main circulation spine, which is in the form of a Greek stoa. The entrance to the is marked by an Ionic portico, while a tower at the center of the court is positioned to stand out in the views from the university's main entrance and to facilitate access to the external amphitheater.

The courtyard of the building features a 14 ft sculpture of Leon Battista Alberti, architect and key feature of the Italian Renaissance, by Scottish sculptor Alexander Stoddart, the artist's tallest single figure. Alberti's ideas of balance and harmony between the individual and the city are inspiration for the new urbanism philosophy taught at the school.

It received the 2019 Acanthus Award of the The Institute of Classical Architecture and Art for INSTITUTIONAL OR COMMERCIAL ARCHITECTURE