The G. Wayne Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons: A Hub for Innovation and Sustainable Design
The G. Wayne Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons (CULC), commonly referred to as Clough Commons, stands as a testament to Georgia Tech's commitment to undergraduate education, sustainable design, and innovative learning environments. Located on the main campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology, this five-story, 220,000 sq ft (20,000 m2) building serves as a central hub for students, offering a diverse range of resources and spaces designed to foster collaboration, exploration, and academic success.
A Vision for the Future of Learning
The Clough Commons project was conceived in response to the growth of Georgia Tech's student body and the evolving needs of modern undergraduate education. The vision was to create an innovative learning environment that extended beyond traditional classrooms, providing students with access to state-of-the-art facilities, collaborative spaces, and academic support services. The building is annexed to the institute’s main campus library.
Plans for the new facility began during the early years of then-Institute President G. Wayne Clough's tenure. Fundraising for the new facility was nearly complete when the request to name it after Clough was made in June 2008. The Clough Commons is financed through a combination of private and public funding.
Architectural Design and Key Features
Designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson Architects of Philadelphia, with principal Bernie Cywinski serving as project architect, the Clough Commons embodies a modern aesthetic that pays homage to Georgia Tech's architectural heritage. The building's design incorporates elements of both traditional and modern styles, particularly in its use of red brick, a material commonly found in other buildings on campus.
The building is situated at the crossroads of the campus. A modernist horizontality ties the architecture to the ground but also allows the building to hover above it. These are shared characteristics with Heffernan’s Architecture Building to the north and Bradbury’s Heffernanesque Stiles Classroom Building to the south.
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The west elevation of Clough Commons is broad and monumental and holds a dialogue as well with FABRAP’s Wenn Student Center opposite, a broad-shouldered, red brick structure that is scaled, like Clough, to the newly enlarged open landscape and new campus green between the two buildings.
The Commons consists of a five-story building linked to the current Price Gilbert Library. Facility programming for the Clough Commons was completed by Perry Dean Rogers Architects and Houser Walker Architecture. The design goal was to create state-of-the-art classrooms and stimulating, innovative public areas for students.
Key features of the Clough Commons include:
Diverse Learning Spaces: The building houses a variety of learning spaces, including nontraditional classrooms, science laboratories, academic services, and common areas. It also features two tiered auditoriums seating over 300 and presentation rehearsal studios.
Collaborative Environment: The Clough Commons emphasizes collaboration and interaction, with numerous lounges, breakout rooms, and reconfigurable tutoring spaces designed to encourage student engagement.
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Vast Atrium: A vast glass-enclosed atrium serves as a central gathering space, providing natural light and a welcoming atmosphere for students to socialize and study.
Café and Exhibit Space: The building also includes a café and exhibit space, further enhancing the student experience and providing opportunities for relaxation and intellectual stimulation.
Sustainable Design and Environmental Responsibility
The Clough Commons is a model of sustainable design and one of two LEED Platinum buildings on Georgia Tech’s campus, reflecting the institute's commitment to environmental stewardship. The building incorporates a range of innovative technologies and strategies to minimize its environmental impact and promote resource conservation.
The undergraduate learning center is especially noteworthy for its sustainable features. Key sustainable features include:
Water Recycling System: A 1.4 million-gallon underground cistern treats, stores, and distributes storm water and condensate from the air-conditioning units to provide non-potable water for flush toilets and other uses. The result of this water recycling is that only about eleven percent of the building’s water use comes from Atlanta’s water system.
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Solar Panel Array: On the roof is an array of 347 solar panels rated at approximately 85 kilowatts, capable of producing 118 megawatt-hours of energy per year. The Clough Commons includes a rooftop solar panel array for the production of on-site renewable energy.
Daylight Harvesting System: North-facing light pods on the roof direct the cooler northern light into the center of the building. A daylight harvesting system controls artificial lighting, turning off indoor light in corridors and other public areas when there is adequate daylight for these spaces, while light monitors bring daylight into the center of the building. Elevations feature glazing on the north facade, narrow windows that dominate the east and west elevations, and sunscreens on southern elevations.
Energy-Efficient Technologies: Other “smart” systems include exhaust fans help to lower energy use by recapturing heated or cooled air, and carbon dioxide sensors that detect the amount of fresh air needed as opposed to recirculating air inside rooms. The building contains a radiant floor heating system.
Low-Emitting Materials: Low-emitting materials serve to minimize harmful volatile organic compound exposure from adhesives, sealants, carpets, paints, and coatings. Restroom counters are formed of recycled glass. The building utilizes refrigerants with low ozone-depleting potential.
Roof Garden: A notable feature is the roof garden overlooking Tech Green, serving as insulation for the building and assisting in water management. The project also included the design of an 18,000 square-foot roof garden, more than half of which is green roof.
Water Efficient Landscaping: The Clough Commons includes a number of techniques to maximize water efficiency including water efficient landscaping, a 1.4-million-US-gallon (5,300 m3) cistern, and water harvesting. Water efficient landscaping involves the use of native plants which tend to require less watering than non-native vegetation. In addition, the cistern provides water for flushing toilets and other non-potable water uses.
Healthy Indoor Environment: Clough Commons was designed to have a healthy indoor environment for users of the facility. This is accomplished by a constant exchange of filtered, fresh air from the outdoors into the building ventilation system. Visible data provided by an integrated building dashboard illustrates the amount of carbon dioxide (in parts per million) inside the building, and compares to outside the building. Using filters and ventilation systems the Clough Commons reduces the amount of carbon dioxide present inside the building, thus creating a healthier indoor environment for users.
Energy Usage Reduction: To reduce energy usage, the mechanical design of the building incorporates a radiant floor heating for tall atrium spaces, an active chilled beam system to provide cooling for lab spaces, an enhanced demand control ventilation system to vary the amount of outdoor air needed for ventilation, an energy recovery ventilator to extract energy from the building exhaust air and precondition the incoming outside air, and a fully enhanced measurement and verification program with numerous sensors on the electrical and mechanical components of the building to allow Georgia Tech to continuously monitor and adjust the building's performance.
Impact on Campus and Student Life
The Clough Commons has had a significant impact on the Georgia Tech campus and student life. By providing a central hub for learning, collaboration, and innovation, the building has fostered a stronger sense of community and enhanced the overall student experience.
The building is the symbolic focus of Georgia Tech’s commitment to undergraduate learning. The Clough Commons transforms an underutilized hillside site, redefining and anchoring campus circulation while creating the Tech Green at the center of campus. At grade level, a multi-story gallery occupies the entire west façade, providing shaded views across Tech Green and a parallel path through the building’s public spaces. The gallery sets the circulation rhythm for the floors above, with pedestrian crossings and east-west viewsheds introduced at key points, and vertical lightwells punctuating the intersections with natural light. At the south end of the gallery, a monumental stair rises to the east, linking to the adjacent Price Gilbert library.
The Clough Commons accommodates a variety of learning spaces, ranging from instructional laboratories to cutting edge specialty classrooms, breakout rooms and re-configurable tutoring spaces. These elements are organized around large zones of daylit, flexibly furnished “Commons” spaces that support student study, interaction and collaboration.
Smallwood developed a prototype classroom mockup to assess the function of a “scale up” classroom. After studying this concept, two such classrooms were created. The goal was to create a highly collaborative, hands-on, computer-rich, interactive learning environment for classes ranging from 27-45 students. State-of-the-art lighting incorporated the first eco-remote dimming ballast. Electronic sun shades, custom whiteboards, and multiple LCD screens were also included.
A Place for Movement and Interaction
The Clough Commons design prioritizes movement and interaction. As such, it is as much about movement and interaction as it is about enclosure.
A Nod to the Past
With its ribbon windows and sunscreens, unique elevations that are dictated by function, and a clarity of parts to the whole, it recalls the functionalist architecture of Paul Heffernan, within whose “modern village” Clough Commons is sited.
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