Poerio Incorporated is the proud winner of the Golden Trowel Awards for Excellence in Masonry Design and Construction for their building of the Duda World Center at California University of Pennsylvania.

The Golden Trowel Awards symbolize quality masonry projects. Projects must use masonry materials -- brick, stone, tile, terrazzo, concrete or glass block, marble, mosaic or plaster -- as dominant exterior and/or interior components.

Located at the "front door" of the University, Duda World Center is the latest state-of-the-art facility at Cal U. This three-story, 25,000 square foot building houses the College of Liberal Arts offices, three lecture halls and seven general-purpose classrooms.

This building is the replacement for the existing Duda Hall World Culture Building, being demolished as a later phase of this project. The demolition will allow the front of the campus to be opened up and will give greater visibility to the older campus architecture such as the Old Main and Dixon Hall. The architects for the building,  MacLachlan, Cornelius, & Filoni, Inc., chose to use masonry in an effort to capture the character inherent in these older buildings and to seamlessly integrate with the surrounding campus architecture. The building construction -- concrete masonry bearing walls and brick veneer with cast-stone banding and ornamentation -- will provide the University with a solid and enduring building that will serve them well into the future.

The west facade of the building, facing the town of California, is more traditional with double-hung windows and cast-stone bands and ornaments reflecting the character of the more traditional buildings at the front of the campus. The east facade that faces the campus is less traditional, containing areas of large curtain-wall that open up the interior of the building to the outside. Both facades have been developed with large masonry arches that signal the location of the building entrance. These masonry arches also reflect the character of the architecture on the campus.

Prominently featured in this project are the two sixty-seven foot towers. Located on each side of Third Street, the main access to the University, these towers create a formal entrance into the main campus. These masonry structures also feature cast-stone banding and ornaments that accentuate the brick facade. The lower level of the towers, featuring large brick arches, is an open air space. The interior of the towers, accessed by a spiral stair that leads upward to three observation levels, looks out over the campus on one side and the town of California on the other. These towers, visible from the traffic light at Wood and Third Street, the center of town, will serve as landmarks that define the main entrance into the University.

Duda World Center,
California University of Pennsylvania

View video from Golden Trowel Awards