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Cougar Village at the University of Houston was purposely designed with much of the amenity space located outside of the rooms to promote socialization for first year students. Cougar Village is inspired by that freshman tradition of leaving your bedroom door open and meeting friends in the hallways, floor lounges, computer rooms, fitness rooms and common kitchens featured in the residence hall.
"What we know with that profile of a student is that socialization issues are quite important," said President and SEO of HADP Architecture, David Harper. "Creating a lot of amenity space outside of therooms is very important."
A tan brick color and a reddish brick are commonly used in the architecture across the campus of the University of Houston. The exterior of Cougar Village is precast concrete and in order to visually break up the wall of uniform concrete, the firm designed portions of the exterior with embedded brick.
"Even though it looks like a brick structure in those the brick is embedded in the concrete. It provides extreme durability and softens the look and feel of the building," Harper said.
The embedded brick also helps the building blend into the existing architectural language of the urban campus that is accustomed to forward
thinking, progressive design.
One such progressive design element is the floor-to-ceiling glass social lounge on each floor. Located on the corners, the lounge spaces jut out from the edge of the building as a large glass rectangular structure. The intent was to treat the corners as lanterns because they are brightly lit at night and provide transparency to the building.
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