Marston Muses-Fall 97  

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Undergraduate and Learning

Research and Graduate Education

Outreach

Alumni

Cross Cutting

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Howe Hall construction is on track

Construction of Howe Hall, Phase I of the Engineering Teaching and Research Complex (ETRC), is on schedule and slightly under budget. The project is on track for completion in August 1999, said Associate Engineering Dean David Holger.

At a cost of $61 million and a net area of 158,000 square feet, the two-building complex is the largest building project ever at Iowa State. It will house AEEM, the Center for Industrial Research and Service (CIRAS), the Iowa Center for Emerging Manufacturing Technology (ICEMT), two auditoriums, high-tech classrooms and lecture halls, student computer labs, conference facilities, and several research labs, including two wind tunnels.

With construction work well underway on Howe Hall (see list of contractors), university planners and college administrators are turning their attention to Phase II. "We're entering an intensive stage of final planning for Phase II and getting into the details of the design," Holger said. "But we can't start Phase II until everyone is out of the Engineering Annex, which will be demolished."

When Howe Hall is completed, the IMSE department will relocate from the Annex to space in Black Engineering vacated by the AEEM department. Engineering Career Services, also in the Annex, will move into Marston Hall.

Construction of Phase II is expected to begin in late 1999 and will take about 20 months to complete.

The shape of things to come

In mid-March, Howe Hall really began to take shape, and the west side of campus acquired a dramatically different appearance. See for yourself on the college's Web pages at <http://www.eng.iastate.edu>. You'll find real-time video from the Howe Cam. In fact, there's an entire ETRC Cineplex with movie archives, daily and weekly updates, construction shorts, and the architects' animated vision of the ETRC.

Located on the roof of Black Engineering, the Howe Cam is a sophisticated system incorporating a Silicon Graphics O2 workstation with 128MB RAM and 31GB total disk space, and an Hitachi KPD50 digital processing CCD camera. The system captures pictures at intervals from 5 to 30 seconds and generates movies at various stages of the ETRC construction.