Van Boerum & Frank Associates, Inc. - Ethel Wattis Kimball Visual Arts Building

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Ethel Wattis Kimball Visual Arts Building

Weber State University

Ogden, Utah

The new Visual Arts Building at the Weber State University Campus was built to provide new classroom and office spaces for the campus visual arts department and to provide a gallery space to exhibit art collections. The mechanical systems that serve this new building needed to meet the requirements for both classroom/ office spaces as well as art exhibition spaces. This required the use of separate air handling systems that would serve each type of space. The primary air handler that serves the classroom and office spaces needed to be able to provide a large quantity of outside air to make up for the air that is exhausted throughout the building. Two separate air handlers were implemented in the design to handle two unique types of spaces. One of these air handlers was dedicated to serve the art exhibition space. This unit utilized very small volumes of outside air and the system is designed to maintain a specific humidity.

The third air handler combined the uses of the other two air handlers. It was

Ethel Wattis Kimball Visual Arts Building

dedicated to serve a large lecture hall that could also be converted into exhibition space. This required large volumes of outside air during lecture hall use and small volumes of outside air and humidity control when used as an exhibition space.

The heating for the building was obtained using the campus central steam plant. Heat exchangers convert the steam to heating water that is distributed to a VAV reheat system and perimeter radiation. The steam was also used to generate domestic hot water for the building. Chilled water is obtained from the campus central plant. Because the campus plant is drained during the winter months, a stand alone air cooled chiller was included in the design to provide year round cooling to the exhibition space air handler. The rest of the air handling systems can take advantage of an air side economizer to lower discharge air temperatures.

The art spaces also include a photo processing lab, a print making studio, a ceramics studio, a woodworking shop, metal working shop, sculpture studio, and jewelry studio. Each of these spaces requires exhaust systems and waste management systems to neutralize chemicals used in the various processes. VBFA was able to successfully manage all the exhaust and chemical neutralization to provide the new classroom and exhibition space that the University had envisioned.