Where’s that giant climbing wall in the atrium?
Rice University’s new recreation and wellness center will have
2 indoor basketball courts, 4 racquetball courts, 2 squash courts, cardio, weights, dance studio, a 50 meter outdoor competition pool, an outdoor recreation pool, and 2 outdoor lighted basketball courts.
That sounds just a bit smaller than UH’s giant 264,000-sq.-ft. Wellness Center on the other side of town. Groundbreaking for Rice’s new building, designed by Lake/Flato Architects with F&S Partners, is scheduled for next week.
After the jump: More muddy images of the complex!
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A larger version of this aerial image appears to have been removed from Rice’s website, perhaps to make a clearer debut at the groundbreaking. Google’s tiny thumbnail version is still available, though!
Here’s the view from the business school, across the street.
- Recreation and Wellness Center [Rice University Facilities Engineering & Planning]
- Construction projects updated [Rice Thresher]
As an alum and a soon to be MBA, I seriously hope they don’t plant freaking palm trees in the courtyard of this thing.
At this rate, Rice will have no intramural fields or open spaces at all, except for tightly regimented quads. Then they’ll have to tear down the stadium–or else do what schools like Yale do and put the playing fields in distant locations completely separate from the campus.
“…do what schools like Yale do and put the playing fields in distant locations completely separate from the campus.”
Heh. That’s exactly what my alma mater did, and then had the cluelessness to complain that the student body never attended any of the athletics events.
We were, however, the first university in Texas to build a massive “rec center” complete with three-story high, freestanding rock wall on campus, so…yeah. I really hope we’re not setting trends in the off-campus athletic facilities area, too.
This looks amazing; wish I could be around to see it finished. Hopefully it will be finished in time for the enrollment surge that will occur after the two new residental colleges on campus are completed.