Although budgetary and technological limitations have delayed administrators' short-term plans for a better-looking and more convenient Bryan Center, their long-term ideas for a more space-efficient building are taking shape.
Although Executive Vice President Tallman Trask described the center's exterior as "hopeless" and "not fixable," he said he is working with architects to find a way to make more productive use of the space inside.
Officials said that adding a glass-enclosed top level for student programming and offices could brighten the dim interior and free up lower levels for more creative and efficient arrangements of activities.
"It's an attempt to respond to everything we've heard from everyone in the last three years," Trask said.
Estimating that the project would cost between $4 million and $5 million, Trask said construction could begin as early as this summer.
The Durham-based architectural firm Duda/Paine has already designed schematic models of the addition, but Trask has not yet asked for construction drawings.
Architect Turan Duda said his firm is focusing on clarifying the building's circulation, defining its orientation and lightening it up.
Describing the current center as "dark and cavernous," Duda said that adding more space would have to be done discreetly.
"We want to make the addition to the building one which is fitting to the campus environment," he said.
Architects will probably follow models like the upper floors of Perkins Library, which are barely noticeable from the outside.
"There's a whole upper level that you don't even know is there," Duda said.
At the beginning of the fall, administrators announced plans for smaller, more immediate improvements including their intention to move the information desk and the Page Auditorium box office to a shared complex in the lobby near Reynolds Theater.
"It took forever to get this thing designed. We realized that it was going to need high-tech equipment it doesn't have now, and that changed the design plans," said Associate Vice President for Auxiliary Services Joe Pietrantoni. "We decided [to] keep working on it and make it stronger and stronger to make sure it can move outward and provide instant information on just about anything."
Contractors will submit bids for the redefined project by early February, and administrators will settle on a contractor by March 1. Construction should begin by March or April.
Original cost estimates for the new information desk ranged from $75,000 to $125,000, said David Majestic, director of planning for Auxiliary Services, who estimated that the redesigned project would likely be more expensive.
For the last several years, students and officials have discussed the need to remodel the Bryan Center, which is often criticized for its abundance of dead space and discontinuous and awkward architecture.
Although parts have been revamped-for example, the café area was given a facelift in 1997-major structural changes have taken a backseat to residential life planning.
As the Residential Program Review enters its final planning stages, the University can now refocus on the question of social space, Trask said.
"We wanted to make sure we knew what the spaces would be in the new and renovated dorms...," he said. "We don't want to build the same thing twice."
Still, he added, a full-scale renovation will have its own complicating factors: "There's no place to move everybody to get it started."
Trask stressed that renovating the Bryan Center will likely remain an ongoing project.
"We're picking off bits and pieces of the upgrade as we can," he said. "There's more work to be done."
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