Muhlenberg College is planning to construct a new Integrated Learning Building and renovate and expand the Career Center. These are parallel projects which bookend the Muhlenberg experience and contribute to a student’s transformation of passion into purpose. The challenge in designing the Integrative Learning Building is threefold: to position the building so it keeps the rhythm and spirit of campus, to create a space that feels as powerfully connected to the campus center as it does to its edge, and to avoid creating a barrier which would isolate East Hall.

The new Integrated Learning Building at Muhlenberg College is intended to further combine technology and the classroom by allowing multi-disciplinary learners to collectively solve a problem. As a physical manifestation of the curriculum, the new building is designed with teamwork in mind and boasts a central collaboration venue serving double duty as a circulation space and lecture hall. An inherently collaborative building should appear that way inside and out.

This new academic building is highlighted by the beacon – an architectural feature designed to attract learning and showcase its collaborative quality. The beacon hangs above the building’s southern entrance with large glass walls to the east and west. A metal sunshade on the southern façade tempers the sun and is respectful of Egner Chapel’s historic face. Just steps inside the lobby, a buzz of conversation fills the air throughout a large open space where students socialize while charging laptops between sips of iced coffee. Upstairs, flexible meeting rooms are clustered near a floating common room equipped with state-of-the-art technology and supplies designed to support the creative explorations of Integrative Learning.