quinnipiac university
health & wellness center
Hamden, Connecticut
“This beautiful building and adjacent amphitheater are far more than brick and mortar— They are representative of our vision to prepare our students for success. This facility contains more than weights or workout machines, it’s the key to a new worldview.”
The new health and wellness center at Quinnipiac brings together clinical health, mental health, and recreation under a single structure in support of whole-body wellness. The building also creates a new healthy living program with classes in cooking, nutrition, and other lifestyle elements.
An ode to the local landscape, the mass timber building is constructed with CLT, and uses principles of biophilia that draw on the rich Connecticut landscape with heavy timber, wood paneling, local stone, and interior green walls. All of the materials for the project were locally sourced and minimally processed, including the spruce-pine-fir structure and granite base. The oak walls of the interior are punctuated by sections of green walls that bring literal living material into the building where it can be seen, nurtured, and felt by students moving through the space. The structure creates a new central courtyard for student gathering or quiet contemplation.
The building is designated to LEED Gold, using mass timber as a strategy to reduce overall embodied carbon. Since opening, weekly student counts have more than tripled from 3,500 visits at the old facility to 12,000 at the new building.
-
Type: New Construction
Size: 55,000 SF
Status: Completed, 2023
Photography: Anton Grassl
Associate Architect: S3 Design
-
2023 Honor Award, AIA New England
2024 Merit Award, BSA Design Excellence
2025 Honorable Mention, SCUP Excellence in Architecture
-
“For Body and Mind: Quinnipiac University Health and Wellness Center,” Architectural Record
“New recreation and wellness center opens at Quinnipiac University,” Fox61
“Quinnipiac University Opens $45 Million Recreation and Wellness Center,” NBC Connecticut
“$45 million recreation center part of plan to 'nurture the community’” New Haven Register
impact
The Quinnipiac Health & Wellness Center officially opened at the start of the Spring 2023 semester, and has been bustling with students from morning to night every day since. Student counts have increased from roughly 3,500 students weekly at the old facility, to more than 12,000 per week at the new building. In addition to a host of new training spaces, studios, and weight machines— including adaptive amchines friendly to those with disabilities— the facility fills a critical need for additionla counseling offices— a national trend, as university commnitiesincrease mental health services available on campus. By incorporating biophilic design strategies, the design team was able to do more than simply provide necessary square footage, but create space for healing that is functional on both an aesthetic an programmatic level. One counselor stated that students were much more willing to open up in her new office, which is clad in character oak and lit by soft sunlight that streams in through a skylight. The Health and Wellness Center is a critical piece of the university’s campus master plan, which emphasizes sustainable design. “It is also an embodiment of what we envision for the university of the future, which is a university that through its facilities prompts us to live better and be better prepared for the future,” said University President Judy Olian at the building’s ribbon cutting ceremony.