The Renick University Center is where students study for exams, eat lunch, meet friends, pay tuition, and pick up ID cards. A space doing all that must be well-lit, comfortable, and inspiring — never clinical. Getting that right was the assignment.
For more than 30 years, Peter Basso Associates has served as MEP engineer at the University of Michigan–Dearborn. When Neumann Smith brought PBA in to refresh the building — since renamed for James C. Renick — the firm returned to a space it had modernized in the 1990s.
PBA led the study, then carried the project through design and construction as mechanical, electrical, and lighting engineer of record. The mandate was a refresh, not a gut — thread new performance through existing bones.
Mechanical engineer Bill Osmun faced the toughest problem: a glazed corridor with underground ductwork feeding grilles at window-side benches. The obvious fix — jackhammering concrete to reach the duct — meant invasive work. Osmun kept the bench grilles and added ceiling grilles instead, balancing comfort without touching the slab. "Careful engineering," he says, "keeps you from taking a building apart."
Overseen by Jose Meijer, lighting designer Chris Bartholomew reshaped a series of open, interconnected spaces. The challenge was matching the right fixture to each and coordinating controls across dozens of zones. The university's detail called for fixtures to dim fully to zero, but controllers "remembered" zero and looked broken on restart. PBA set a 1% floor so the lights always respond.
That fix exposed a gap in the university's design guidelines, which PBA marked up for a campus-wide update — part of a long-standing role shaping U of M's standards. "We're an extension of their office," Meijer says. "We know their guidelines inside and out, and if something needs revision, we speak up."
The finished center is modern, efficient, and inviting — the kind of place students want to spend time. Same building, same partner, 30 years on.
