Name: Southeast University Neighborhood
Opened: August 2019
Architects: KWK Architects (design), Architecture Incorporated (architect-of-record)
What do you do when you want to provide housing for upper-division and graduate students but don’t want them to feel like they are living in the residence halls of their (albeit, recent) youth? You create something like the Southeast University Neighborhood development at South Dakota State University.
The new development, which opened last year, houses about 200 students over a two-block area. The students live in a three-story apartment building featuring 45 units with a mix of one- to four-bedroom floor plans and one or two bathrooms, as well as units for students needing additional accessibility. Each fully furnished unit also has a kitchen, in-unit laundry, and interior access to an attached Starbucks location.
The project also includes five fully furnished two-story townhouses with double beds in all
bedrooms, outdoor porches and swings, kitchen, in-unit laundry, living room, and off-street parking. Each unit offers enhanced privacy, as there are no shared corridors or entries. The university is calling these units Townhouse Row.
Douglas Wermedal, the South Dakota State University associate vice president for student affairs, worked with the project to help give it an aesthetic approach that stood out from other campus housing stock. “This is our first housing devoted exclusively to non-required students, and it is nice to provide this demographic with a way to stay on campus if they so choose,†says Wermedal. “We were after something that clearly said ‘apartment’ and not ‘residence hall.’ We also wanted the townhouses to be a transition type of facility from private residences to something residential but was not massive in terms of building footprint. The apartment and townhouses and surrounding greenspace accomplish these program goals nicely.â€
— James A. Baumann
CALL FOR SPOTLIGHTS
We want to see your new residence halls. Please send us your information at talkingstick@acuho-i.org.
