Lloyd Hall at Ellsworth Community College

OPN Architects designed Lloyd Hall, formally the Duane and Phyllis Lloyd Residence Hall, as new housing for Ellsworth Community College in Iowa Falls, part of the Iowa Valley Community College District. The 127-bed hall grew out of a district-wide housing study that weighed renovating the campus's existing dorms against building new, and it opened to students in the summer of 2023. Common spaces sit along the south side of the building to look back over campus, with a two-story opening linking the second and third floor lounges so the two levels read as one community rather than stacked, separate floors.

Ludowici terracotta covers the building in a warm red-brown that ties back to the brick palette of the historic campus, reset here in a flat rainscreen format that reads as contemporary rather than literal brick matching. A wood-look panel volume breaks from the terracotta at the tower housing the vertical circulation, and full-height glazing at the base opens the ground floor lounges out to the campus green.