Business Instructional Facility, Champaign-Urbana

The Gies College of Business Instructional Facility is a $60 million, 160,000 sq ft state-of-the-art business facility designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects located on the Champaign campus at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. The facility is home to numerous classrooms, career development and academic counseling centers, student program offices, a recruitment suite, a 300-seat auditorium, and a spacious study area for students. Rafael Pelli, a partner of Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects who was the project principal for the Business Instructional Facility, explained in an interview on October 17, 2008 that the purpose of this building is to serve as "a sense of place, a community, a center to the College of Business". The 'U'-shaped building consists of a large commons area, furnished mainly with wood, with a prominent glass curtain wall on the south side of BIF facing the courtyard formed by the 'U' shape. The building is the first business facility at a public university in the world to achieve a platinum certification through Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a U.S. Green Building Council rating system used to measure the sustainability in construction, and is the first building on the UIUC campus to achieve a LEED certification. The noteworthy 'green' elements of the Business Instructional Facility include solar panels, a green roof, and an energy-efficient cooling and heating system. The combined 'green' initiatives are expected to produce savings of $300,000 per year in comparison with traditional classroom buildings on the UIUC campus. ()