Art Building West, which won an American Institute of Architects Honor Award in 2007, has been closed since the June 2008 flood that inundated much of the U. of Iowa campus. (Chronicle photos by Lawrence Biemiller)

Iowa City — After extensive negotiations with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the University of Iowa accepted bids on Tuesday on a project to reopen a much-praised art building damaged in the June 2008 floods that caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to the campus.

The project will restore Art Building West, designed by Steven Holl Architects and opened in 2006, to its original appearance. The building, which earned a 2007 honor award from the American Institute of Architects, is best known for a library wing cantilevered out over an old quarry pond.

The 2008 flood, which affected 22 of the university's buildings, caused tremendous damage to the...

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An addition to the front of Buchanan and Marshall Halls brings big improvements to the 1956 dorms. (Chronicle photographs by Lawrence Biemiller)

Buchanan Hall was only 20 years old in 1976, when I moved in as a Franklin & Marshall College freshman, but already it left a lot to be desired. Like its twin, Marshall Hall, Buchanan was a three-story shoebox of a dorm, with 20 double rooms per floor and cinderblock walls that echoed with the music pounding out of our giant stereo speakers. The showers were communal, but that was about it for social space, except for an underused lounge outside of what had once been a dining hall connecting Buchanan and Marshall. Buchanan's red-brick exterior had one horizontal band of limestone trim and a couple of vertical stripes, but architecturally it was about as exciting as wax paper.

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A science-building addition at North Carolina Central U. is one of two campus buildings to win awards from the American Institute of Architects. (Photo by James West)

The American Institute of Architects' Committee on Architecture for Education included two university buildings among nine projects that won 2010 Education Facility Design Awards.

An award for excellence went to the Biomanufacturing Research Institute Technology Enterprise, or Brite, at North Carolina Central University. The 56,300-square-foot building, an addition to an existing science facility, houses teaching and research labs focused on biomanufacturing. It cost $17.8-million and opened in 2008. The design architect was Freelon; the architect of record was O'Brien/Atkins Associates.

A citation went to the Foster Center for Student Innovation at the University of Maine at Orono (left; U. of Maine photo). The 5,73...

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