Fairchild Hall
From USAFA Folklore
Fairchild Hall is the main academic building. It is named after General Muir S. Fairchild, the first commander of Air University and later Vice Chief of Staff. Fairchild Hall contains classrooms, laboratories, administrative and faculty offices, and the McDermott Library. It forms the eastern border of the Terrazzo.
[edit] Architecture
(taken from USAFA's National Historic Landmark application)
Like the Cadet Quarters, the Academic Building extends below the level of the Terrazzo to diminish the massive scale of a six-story building with 905,075 square feet. The building complex is 786 by 282 feet, slightly wider than the Cadet Quarters, but approximately half as long. Unlike that building, there is a clear break between Fairchild Hall and the Terrazzo, created by a road at a level thirty feet below the primary Cadet Area. Fairchild Hall is reached from the Terrazzo via two wide pedestrian bridges. This permits ground-level circulation around the building, allowing access to lower level garage and service facilities.
Similar to Vandenberg Hall, the building height originally dropped to two stories in one section, opening a view from the Terrazzo out to the surrounding valleys and peaks. Appearing to be two distinct buildings from the Terrazzo, the design demarcated interior spaces for the library and academic administration offices (on the north) and the academic classrooms and laboratories (on the south). The exterior uses modern architectural elements with a rectangular plan terminating in a flat, clean roofline. The southern wing has a glare-reducing glass wall on the north elevation. The west elevation, seen from the Terrazzo level, has glare-reducing glass walls on the third floor (which appears to be the first floor from the Terrazzo) and also on the sixth floor. The fourth and fifth floors, which contain classrooms, are clad in white Georgia marble. The Air Force Academy instruction method typically placed an entire class of twelve to sixteen cadets at a blackboard simultaneously. In response, SOM created windowless classrooms with blackboards on all walls, which, in turn, influenced the exterior design since surface glass was limited. The southern elevation shows a glass wall that extends one level below the Terrazzo level, with dark tinted glass and dark spandrel panels.
The library wing’s north elevation is white marble on both ends, with the center portion being dark glass. The third floor, at the Terrazzo level, has an open colonnade one bay deep, then a glass wall. The west elevation, facing the Terrazzo, repeats the open colonnade treatment on the third floor, but the fourth and fifth floors are glass walls.
Grounded on drilled caissons, Fairchild Hall has structural steel framing with twenty-eight foot columns. A steel frame, with a floor system of lightweight concrete over a steel span with concrete joists, spans the twenty-eight feet between steel girders. In some portions of the building where it was necessary to omit a line of columns, fifty-six foot welded steel trusses span the gap. As was done for Vandenberg Hall, the design eliminates double columns at the four expansion joints needed in the long academic complex.
The third floor (Terrazzo level) features two large breezeways, with the upper floors supported by pilotis in those areas. Walls covered with blue Venetian glass (indicating academics) accent the third floor entrances. The fourth, fifth and sixth floors feature an interior two-level courtyard, utilizing the third floor breezeways and the top of the 1,000 seat auditorium on the third level. This results in a rectangular floor plan and circulation pattern, which is a character-defining feature of the second, fourth and fifth floors.
There, wide hallways are placed along the exterior glass walls, ringing the rectangular building. Perpendicular interior hallways on the second, fourth and fifth floors create large grids between sections of classrooms, lecture halls and offices.
The interior features science and humanities classrooms, plus laboratories, lecture halls, library, dispensary and office space for the Commandant of Cadets and staff. The ground floor contains a large parking garage, mechanical rooms, storage space and some offices. The science and engineering laboratories are on the second level, which also contains the lower portions of several auditoriums, including two 250-seat lecture halls, two 450-seat lecture halls, and one 1000-seat lecture hall. These lecture halls extend two stories, into the third level. Opening to the Terrazzo, the third floor is also the entry level for the library at the northern end of the building. The southern end of the third level is currently being remodeled. From the third floor up, the rooms decrease in size. The fourth and fifth floors (but only two up from the Terrazzo level) contain classrooms in clusters of five oriented around vestibule coatrooms. The top floor holds departmental and faculty offices; this floor has been partially reconfigured from the original layout.
Fairchild's acoustically tiled hallway ceilings were designed to float. In the exterior hallways there is a recessed light band along the interior wall at the ceiling, and another recess by the window. Interior walls are constructed of hollow clay tile on plaster, painted white. Flooring in the building's hallways are predominately white vinyl, with black vinyl tile on both the outer margins and forming grid lines to break up the appearance of the long corridors. The colors of the doors is consistent within each cross hallway, with each hall showing an Academy class color of yellow (gold), red, or blue. The colored doors are outlined by black metal frames. Stairways have polished white terrazzo risers and treads, black steel railings with aluminum hand rails. Several stairways in the building were remodeled, including placing 12" white marble tiles on the walls. Two interior bridges connect the second floor of Fairchild to the newer Consolidated Education and Training Facility, to the east.
The library is located on the north end of Fairchild Hall, appearing to be a separate building from the outside. The library received its own name only recently: the Robert F. McDermott Library, honoring the dean of faculty from 1956 to 1968. Originally, the library's main entrance was on the southern elevation, facing the other portion of Fairchild Hall. However, in 1981, the Academy built an addition in the open space between the library and academic rooms. This addition placed a new library entrance on the west elevation, facing the Terrazzo. The new clerestory addition contains the circulation desk, reference area and a large reading room. The upper interior portion of the room features exposed painted trusses, surrounded by glass walls. This upper glass-enclosed portion of the room can be seen from the nearby fourth floor hallway of the classroom portion of Fairchild. The library's most distinctive feature is a three story geometrical staircase with no central post, on the north of the main reading room, leading from the main floor to the stacks and main reading rooms. While the staircase originally was a focal feature upon entering the library, the 1981 addition placed it well within the middle of the library. The staircase sits on a large square of polished brown terrazzo. West of the stair on the main floor, the wall is covered with gold Venetian glass. The stair's risers and treads are white marble, with a black metal railing and a wooden hand rail. Centered in the ceiling at the top of the staircase is a dome-shaped skylight. The fourth floor (one floor up from the Terrazzo level) has walls that are two-story high, with the fifth floor being a gangway mezzanine in the center of the room. The floating ceiling features an open grid drop ceiling, with fluorescent lights above the plastic grid over the gangway. The two-story walls are covered with white marble on the east and west, and are glass on the south and north. The glass walls are covered inside by two-story blue curtains. The fourth floor contains stacks and a reading room, and the fifth floor contains stacks. The sixth floor, containing stacks, also features a floating open grid dropped ceiling, with fluorescent lights above the grid. The Air Force Academy retained one of the country's largest industrial design firms, Walter Dorwin Teague Associates, to handle the interior furnishings of the Academy buildings. As interior designer, the firm chose or designed all the furnishings and selected the colors, fabrics, and floor coverings. In the library, they chose the Eames desk and lounge chairs covered in Academy colors.
The library addition closed off the view from the Terrazzo to the rolling hills and plains to the east. In addition to the library addition, Fairchild Hall also underwent another addition. In 1965, the classroom portion of the building was extended to the south, using plans by the architectural firm of Leo A. Daly that mirrored the existing SOM design and is virtually indistinguishable today.
