TCU Residence Halls Balance Transparency, Community and Fire Safety
Key Highlights
- Hill Hall and Walsh Hall opened in early 2025 on TCU’s Fort Worth campus, adding 300 beds across two four-story residence halls.
- Glass-enclosed study rooms use daylight and clear sightlines to foster interaction and help students feel connected and safe.
- Fireframes Designer Series doors and Fireframes Aluminum Series frames provide fire-rated assemblies with a consistent, slender profile.
- The study-room walls, sidelites and transoms use 60-minute fire-resistance and impact-rated glazing tested to UL 263 and ASTM E119.
- Some openings use 20-minute fire-protection-rated glass-ceramic doors, permitted for qualifying 60-minute fire partitions under the 2024 IBC.
Early in 2025, Texas Christian University (TCU) opened Hill Hall and Walsh Hall, on the eastside of the Fort Worth campus. Both four-story, suite-style residence halls have a combined bed capacity of 300 and are just a short walk from the Neeley School of Business.
These residence halls were built with the student body in mind. According to Tony Hartin, architect at Grace Design Studio (the firm behind the project), to foster community the designs focused on creating several spaces where students are encouraged to interact with each other. The glass enclosed study rooms located throughout both residence halls offer a prime example of such spaces.
For these rooms, the glass is essential to the project’s design goals. As Hartin explains, “We wanted them to be as transparent and light-filled as possible. Glass allows acoustic privacy without compromising connection to the larger space.”
The design team for the TCU project opened up the two residence halls by specifying multiple exterior windows and glass curtain walls. The transparent glass enclosures within the halls let light from these assemblies stream into the study rooms, optimizing daylight access.
The transparency of the enclosures also supports campus security. Hartin explains, “When designing for higher education, we want to ensure students feel safe, which includes creating spaces where students are not isolated.”
The floor-to-ceiling glass enclosures and complementing full-lite glass doors maintain sightlines so students can see what is going on inside and outside the room for improved safety and connection. The ability to see into the study rooms also advertises how students should use the rooms. Passersby can see notes and equations jotted on marker boards, students on laptops, or groups hanging out together.
Because these study rooms are located in the halls’ corridors, their construction, both the glass partitions and the full-lite doors, had to meet requirements for fire-rated design.
“We knew we needed fire-rated assemblies,” Hartin says. “But it was important that we picked a framing profile that resembled other profiles, both for aesthetic consistency and to maximize transparency.”
To meet both code-driven requirements and design goals, the team landed on specifying a framing system that features a slender, roll-formed steel subframe covered with an aluminum outer frame. The team combined Fireframes Designer Series doors with Fireframes Aluminum Series frames, both from Technical Glass Products (TGP). The result was a fire-rated frame that could support full walls of fire-rated glass and maintain a consistent design aesthetic across the entire built environment.
For the fire-rated glass door assemblies into the rooms, all component parts—from the hardware to the openers and seals—are rated as a complete unit and arrive onsite ready for installation. Hartin elaborates, “Specifying a full door system designed to be rated inherently makes the process easier on the designer and ensures occupant safety.”
For the study rooms, the glass walls, sidelites, and transoms incorporate a 60-minute fire-resistance and impact-rated glazing material, to block fire and smoke as well as radiant and conductive heat. The full glazing assembly is certified in accordance with UL Solutions’ UL 263 and ASTM International’s ASTM E119 wall assembly test standards.
Most of the Fireframes Designer Series doors achieve a 60-minute fire door rating in accordance with UL 10B, UL 10C and UL 1784 test standards as well as standards from the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA): NFPA 80 and NFPA 252. However, some fire-rated doors incorporate FireLite 20, a 20-minute fire-protection-rated glass-ceramic, which blocks fire and smoke but not radiant and conductive heat.
In accordance with Table 716.1(2) of the 2024 International Building Code (IBC), 20-minute fire-rated doors are acceptable 'opening protectives' within 60-minute fire partitions and smoke barriers, such as the assemblies inside Hill Hall and Walsh Hall. The glass ceramic material provides the necessary rating to satisfy this requirement for the doors into and out of some study nooks.
The study rooms in both Hill Hall and Walsh Hall demonstrate that open sightlines and daylight access are compatible with a code-compliant design. The fire-rated glass systems used for these spaces achieve a balance between privacy and communal engagement while also guarding students from multiple fire and life safety risks. Further, they meet the project team’s goals for maximum transparency and a cohesive design aesthetic.
