Wean Hall

Project History

Wean Hall houses part of Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science. It was designed in the Brutalist style popular in America during the 1950s and ‘60s and built in the early ‘70s following the fashion of the day and according to the drawings of Architect Dahlen Ritchey.
The building currently serves mainly as classroom space but features a prominent cube, positioned over the main entrance, containing a windowless lecture hall. It is setback from but situated amongst a quadrangle of Classical-style buildings and was showing signs of aging, common with concrete structures in colder climates. Corrosion of reinforcing steel was causing spalling and cracking in the building’s façade and was untreated until renovations began the summer of 2013.
Engineering plans called for exposing the rebar, proper preparation of the repair zones and encasing the voids in forms to be left in place up to a week to minimize future cracking. Conproco’s Forment®, which consistently produces high quality repairs, was poured into the forms ensuring that the rebar would be completely encapsulated. The contractor hand shaved the patches to insure a more uniform appearance. Conpro Lastic was hand rolled in two coats to insure a waterproof membrane and create a uniform and aesthetic appearance.
All repairs and improvements were completed by the fall of 2014 and in time for the Computer Science Department’s 50th anniversary celebration in 2015.