The project includes a stand-alone, two-story office building, with adjacent amenities building to house meeting rooms for up to 150, training rooms, a 300-seat cafeteria for the campus, plus parking for up to 400 vehicles.

The design is an open plan concept that uses quality materials to reinforce local context and natural site relationships. Interior architecture and material finish elements enhance the aesthetic quality of the office areas. The use of brick, stone, metal, and glass connect the interior to the exterior. The transparency of the building creates an interior flooded with natural light and enhances the interior and exterior space for workstation views.

The conference and meeting center was designed to accommodate staff and large group meetings. Meeting rooms for smaller groups are located adjacent to workspaces in the office portion of the headquarters facility. The meeting center includes three modular-sized rooms that can be subdivided into smaller meeting rooms.

A vaulted canopy ceiling in the cafeteria reflects the exterior building design. Scale is brought to the space by providing more intimate seating groups beneath lower metal planes adjacent to the curtainwall. The campus landscape is integrated into the cafeteria via connection through glazing on three sides of the space, as well as finish floor patterns that use stone from the exterior paving as banding with the structural columns. The enclosure of the cafeteria servery uses fixed and sliding glass panels to open and close when in use, acting as a piece of three-dimensional art.

ACT's corporate headquarters was awarded the 2005 ASLA Wisconsin Chapter Excellence Award, the 2004 AIA Wisconsin Merit Award, and first place in the 2004 IIDA Wisconsin Design Award.

Project Information
Building Owner:		American College Testing
Building Location:		Iowa City, Iowa UNITED STATES
Project Type:		New Construction
Principal Building Function:		Corporate Office
Project Timeline		May 2000 Planning Start Sep 2000 Design Start Jul 2001 Construction Start Sep 2003 Completion Last known status: Completed
Construction Cost:		$30,000,000
Cost Per Sq. Ft:		$176
		About These Cost Figures
Building Information
Project Includes:		Conference Room Headquarters Office Parking Structure
Total GSF:		170,000
Project Team
Architect		Flad Architects
Engineer - MEP		Affiliated Engineers Inc. (AEI)
Profile Created 02/02/2007
Last Updated 10/12/2007
About the Reported Cost Figures The cost figures reported are supplied by the firms that submitted these projects for publication, which in most cases are the designers or builders. Whereas these sources are intimately familiar with their projects, they may not be fully aware of the owners' finally-realized and recorded costs. In some cases, costs are truly and completely accounted for, and in others they represent a near approximation of the final costs. Costs have not been adjusted for year of construction, nor has any attempt been made to make regional cost adjustments. Further, costs are not comparable on any kind of detailed standard costing model. Hence, it is possible for the cost of one building to include a steam boiler, while the cost of a comparable building might not include the boiler, if steam is being supplied from an already existing campus grid. Or, in another case, a building might include excess boiler capacity to supply steam to another building. Some submittals include fees or unusual site improvements as part of the construction costs, which others do not.