The Academic Instructional Center (AIC) is a $54 million, 127,000 sf building that accommodates 750 classroom seats and consolidates the Communications Sciences and Disorders (CSD) and Psychology Departments. The AIC forms the south gateway to Western’s campus which completes the ellipse quadrangle and preserves the pedestrian pathway to Fairhaven Housing that bisects the building. The AIC is organized into the west wing, containing general campus lecture halls, computer labs, and classrooms, and the east wing for graduate research labs and faculty offices. The two wings are connected by a dramatic, glass-enclosed “collaborative learning bridge,” an extension of the two-story commons, providing a variety of student collaboration areas ranging from individual to group study. 

The LEED certified AIC is one the largest naturally ventilated academic buildings in the country and a national model for passive green design strategies, which has been presented at several AASHE conferences and featured in Greenbuild publications.  

Opsis provided the Predesign report for this project and was subsequently selected as the design architect, with NAC|Architecture as the executive architect.