The University of Southern Indiana held a ribbon-cutting for its architecturally innovative new University Center East on March 3. UC East brings the combined University Center to 173,904 square feet, including 59,720 of reconstructed old library and 20,815 of a new multistory link and tower construction. The total project cost $18.6 million.
Designed by Holzman Moss Bottino Architecture of New York City, UC East repurposes components and materials that are manufactured in or indigenous to southwestern Indiana, or are of historical significance to USI and the community. The building is intended not only to provide needed space for the rapidly growing university, but also to celebrate its Evansville and southwestern Indiana roots.
UC East is distinguished by its architecturally distinctive centerpiece, the 97-foot-tall conical tower. The facility is also distinguished by its extensive use of local building materials, applied in groundbreaking new ways, including aluminum ingots from Alcoa Warrick Operations near Newburgh.
Alcoa Warrick Operations, one of the world's largest aluminum facilities, utilizes an electromagnetic casting process to create ingots weighing about 44,000 pounds. A typical ingot is 30 feet long, 65 inches wide, and 21 inches thick.
After casting, the ingots are rolled in a multistage process to create aluminum sheet for products such as food and beverage cans. For UC East, the ends of eight ingots were cut to create 2,300-pound benches. The distinctive X on the surface of the benches is where the casting process first begins.
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