Case Study

Indoor Athletic Facility at UGA | Georgia, USA

The University of Georgia is home to one of the most successful college athletic programs in the United States, boasting a record of over 40 national championship trophies across their Bulldog teams. The program needed an indoor facility designed to help its student-athletes reach their full potential all year long.

The solution was the William Porter Payne and Porter Otis Payne Indoor Athletic Facility, a 140-yard-long by 80-yard-wide multi-sport facility that contains a regulation-size football field, as well as track and field training areas with sprint lanes, a pole vault pit and long jump pits.

According to architecture firm Collins Cooper Carusi, a noteworthy feature of the design is “a translucent wall panel system that bathes the interior with filtered daylight.” Kalwall Corporation engineers and manufactures the translucent wall systems that are utilized on multiple orientations and elevations of the building envelope.

Use of daylighting by Kalwall provides numerous advantages for the athletes within the facility. Natural light is proven to boost mood and improve performance, creating a healthy environment athletes want to be in. Those unseen benefits are matched by visible ones. Kalwall’s sandwich panel technology diffuses light to provide a glare-free space that enhances visual acuity for athletes. It allows ideal conditions for videography so practices can be recorded and reviewed. The translucent nature of the product also means private practices are kept private.

An effective indoor athletic facility, most essential when weather turns inclement, also needs to ensure a comfortable environment. Impact-resistant Kalwall panels are designed to minimize solar heat gain while providing best-in-industry thermal performance. The reduction in heating and cooling loads paired with limited reliance on artificial lighting results in significant cost savings. Other sports facilities have reported annual savings of $100k after installing Kalwall panels.

Selecting the site of the new facility was a challenge on an already-crowded athletic campus. In order to optimize indoor space without compromising adjacent outdoor practice fields, the new indoor athletic facility was built as an addition to the existing Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall. Exterior building materials were selected to help blend into the surroundings, but at night, the Kalwall panels can be backlit to provide a beautiful soft glow that acts as a wayfinding feature for the new facility.

UGA boasts as many as 600 student-athletes each year, and this indoor athletic facility will serve as both a recruitment tool and a place where Bulldogs will continue to build their winning spirit.