Wharton primes for new Huntsman Hall

Taylor Allderdice High School '98 Pittsburgh, Pa. Come the spring semester of 2002, the Wharton School will add another jewel to its crown when construction is completed on its new, $128 million business education complex, Huntsman Hall, to be located at 38th and Walnut streets. Named for 1959 Wharton graduate Jon Huntsman -- whose $40 million contribution to the business school last May makes him the building's largest donor -- Huntsman Hall will house classrooms for the 4,700 students in Wharton's undergraduate and MBA programs, as well as administrative offices and four academic departments. It will provide space for 48 state-of-the-art classrooms, 57 specially-designed group workstations for team-based learning, study and social lounges, an auditorium and conference center, as well as two new cafZs. "I think the building is a critical step forward," outgoing Wharton Dean Thomas Gerrity said when plans for the project were released in early February. "We'll have vastly improved classroom experience, better technology, new team study rooms.? It is part of our master plan to bring life and vibrancy back to Walnut Street and the campus environment." Designed by internationally renowned architectural firm Kohn Fox Pederson, officials said the building will be highly functional while keeping in mind the traditional style and scale of the smaller buildings that will surround it on Locust Walk and the larger, modern structures on Walnut Street. Huntsman Hall itself will have two main components, with separate entrances for both undergraduate and graduate students. The main entrance for undergraduates will face Locust Walk and lead to the ground and first floors, which will host classrooms, computer and behavior labs, study lounges, advising offices and an indoor-outdoor cafe. This part of the complex will also feature ground-floor space for Wharton's undergraduate and MBA clubs and business conference planning committees. Over half of the rest of Huntsman Hall's space will be dedicated to an eight-story, cylindrical drum shaped tower overlooking Walnut Street, where most MBA students will enter. More than 250 offices for the Legal Studies, Management, Marketing and Operations and Information Management departments, in addition to administrative offices, will be located in this part of the building. On the top floor of this section, a 200-seat "colloquium" and multi-purpose conference center with a 40-foot skylight will provide meeting space for University functions. According to principal architect Bill Pederson, Huntsman Hall's classrooms will feature a unique "U-shaped design" and will be enhanced by the latest technology such as video-conferencing, video production and editing stations for group projects. Although groundbreaking took place in early April, the plans for Huntsman Hall had been in the works for years. "When I arrived at Penn five years ago, the need for a new facility was obvious," University President Judith Rodin said at the groundbreaking ceremony. "The world's finest business school was operating in facilities that neither matched its needs nor reputation. We were at the point where the quality of the facilities were having a detrimental effect on the quality of our programming." In addition to Huntsman's $40 million donation, more than $70 million has been raised through smaller alumni and corporate donors, making Huntsman Hall the largest privately funded construction project in the University's history. Still, Wharton and University officials need to raise nearly $20 million dollars before construction is completed.