Date Posted: 11.01.2020
UC Irvine Middle Earth Towers received the 2020 National Award of Excellence in Educational Facilities from the Design Build Institute of America (DBIA). This top national award for educational facilities was presented at the Design-Build Conference and Expo awards ceremony on October 29th.
As the DBIA shared in its presentation of the project, “Tolkien fans, this one is for you.”
This expansion to UCI’s Middle Earth housing community, which was designed in the 1960s and named in tribute to Tolkien’s enduring stories, features two residential towers above a mixed-use podium and richly landscaped base echoing the natural form and color of the neighboring region’s limestone canyons. Designed to support the university’s goals of carbon neutrality by 2025, the building and site achieved LEED Platinum certification, reducing energy consumption and minimizing its carbon footprint.
The project is a design-build collaboration with Hensel Phelps. Additional team members include DCI Engineers (structural) and Michael Wall Engineering (electrical).
