Bowling Green State University’s Maurer Center is a unique piece of architecture that lures students to the university and College of Business. The Maurer Center comprises the renovated Hanna Hall and a 50,000-square foot addition. This addition and renovation provide a clean transition from Hanna Hall’s original architecture, Art Deco, to modern architecture. Hanna Hall was built in 1921 and was significantly delayed due to WWI material shortages. The building was originally an elementary school where BGSU students would teach. The architecture allowed students to feel like they were in an actual school classroom, allowing them to observe students firsthand and practice teaching them, which enhanced the curriculum. Flash forward almost 100 years later to 2020, where the addition to Hanna Hall – The Maurer Center – has been constructed to allow business students to feel like they are working at an actual world corporation like Microsoft, Amazon, or Google. This transformation of teaching to business, traditional architecture to modern architecture, has been perfectly executed by the architects Perkins & Will and a Bowling Green firm called The Collaborative.
Inside the Maurer Center
Macy Spieth, 4th year, Interior Design
The interior of the Mauer Center at Bowling Green State University takes a modern spin on this older structure. The interior incorporates plenty of glass, bringing a lot of natural light into the spaces, allowing for more sustainable design and increasing student morale. The abundance of windows and window partitions from room to room creates the feeling of an open floor plan to engage collaboration between students and faculty. The Maurer Center features a cutting-edge center column that displays current stock market information. This central area mimics the Wall Street trading floor, allowing students to purchase and sell stock in real-time. This new addition kept the original brick exterior and used it as part of the design by using the concrete accents as inspiration for the massive concrete column.
Wall Street inspired column in Maurer Center
Ashlynn Parrish, 3rd year, Business Administration
with a specialization in Marketing
The Maurer Center resembles a high-tech, modern corporate environment to make the transition after college successful. Business students learn to be innovative and have a higher level of thinking in this environment. Bowling Green’s core values surround students because of branded interior design that exemplifies the university’s message. By having a branded interior design, you encourage clients, customers, employees, and in this case, students and staff to reflect your core values. The Mauer Center has many collaboration spaces to connect to enhance intellectual and personal growth. The building creates a space to elevate creativity + innovation by having a floating classroom, student organization hubs, visualization labs, and cutting-edge features. They include university colors of brown and orange on furniture pieces and walls to incorporate the university’s brand.
