UC Riverside School of Business Building

The School of Business Building (SBB) is a LEED Platinum, four-story, concrete academic building on the UC Riverside campus that supplements the existing Anderson Hall and Olmsted Hall buildings. The new building engages undergraduate and graduate students through open, responsive, and welcoming floor plans. Teamed with McCarthy as the general contractor and MRY Architects, Coffman’s team of structural engineers contributed to the successful design of a new building that prioritizes collaboration and student success while elevating the School’s status among competing business schools as technologically sophisticated and forward-looking.

The SBB supports the University’s projected growth in enrollment with 63,000 sf of space that houses classrooms, student support spaces, faculty and administrative offices, as well as assembly spaces such as an auditorium and cafe. Many features work in unison to create an inspiring and inviting atmosphere. Long-span operable glass partitions at the café area blend the interior environment with the exterior. A large central stair and second floor opening allow for an uninterrupted view of the adjacent hillside through the building from the main entrance. The long cantilever at the fourth floor concrete deck provides students and faculty with an unimpeded view of campus.

Given the project site was formerly an existing parking lot adjacent to a hillside, the proposed building location provided unique design and construction challenges for the team to integrate the structure with the surrounding landscape. These challenges included extensive site work concentrated on cutting the new building into the hillside such that the second floor is at grade level on the back side. This was achieved with large retaining walls, stepped footings to account for various grade, and slab elevation changes. Site work also included two new ancillary storage shed buildings.