Since the grand opening of the Bakke Recreation & Wellbeing Center on April 24, 2023, the facility has been used by an average of about 4,000 students daily. In combination with the Nicholas Recreation Center, together, both gyms see about 10,000 students a day, a fifth of the student population.
Director of Facilities and Operations at Recreation Wellbeing Sadat Khan has been on campus for almost nine years, and throughout this time, he has witnessed many changes to the campus facility master plan, even leading the design efforts for the Bakke facility. In celebration of the one-year anniversary of the Bakke, Khan joins the latest episode of GridgeFridge and gives listeners some behind-the-scenes insight into the design process of the facility.
“We’ve really been looking at [the Bakke] project since 2010, but that process has really been driven by student feedback,” Khan says. “It’s been driven by a lot of passionate professionals who’ve worked in the industry for a long time and who’ve had a chance to think and dream about what’s possible for the facility.”
The Bakke design process followed the opening of the Nicholas Recreation Center in late 2020, and the design team took many ideas and lessons from the Nick (Nicholas Recreation Center) construction process and expanded on some of these aspects to address more student needs. One of these central ideas was accessibility of the facility.
The team also wanted to ensure that the Bakke was different from the Nick. Where the Nick was located in downtown Madison and featured bright Badger Red and UW–Madison insignias to match the energy of the location, the team wanted the Bakke to fit into the Lakeshore neighborhood, choosing to include a set of large windows and a palette of whites, green, and wood for the facility.
“We wanted everyone to enter in the same way and feel included. But then as soon as you enter the space, and you look to the back of the building, you could see the outdoors, the lake, Lakeshore nature preserve,” Khan says. “And we wanted that connection that as soon as you got in, you still felt like you were a little bit outside.”
The design team for the Bakke also incorporated student needs and ideas, including two students on the design team and holding focus groups with different sports clubs and student organizations. This student perspective was helpful in determining which types of equipment would be popular with students and appropriate for the facility.
For example, students pointed out the rising interest in esports. The Bakke now includes this feature, offering three sports simulators at the facility. Student perspective also pushed the committee to think long-term and be future-oriented with decisions about the design of the building.
“We’re not building a facility for the next five years, we’re building a space that’s going to be ready to go for 50 years,” Khan says. “We wanted to make sure that the Bakke was something that could evolve over time and really met the needs of students.”
The Bakke also provides a space to support previously unaddressed aspects of student wellbeing. The facility has about 5,000 to 6,000 square feet of well being specific areas, including massage therapy rooms, spaces for athletic training, the Mind Body studio, the Wolf Teaching Kitchen and a Rejuvenation Room with three nap pods. These services can address wellbeing areas that students are missing, like getting proper sleep or learning to cook, and can help students form healthy habits.
Recreation Wellbeing at UW–Madison is responsible for far more than just sports or recreation. The department is aligned with University Health Services (UHS) under the Health and Wellbeing section of Student Affairs. With the addition of the Bakke, Recreation Wellbeing now has dedicated spaces for wellbeing programs and can continue to support students’ holistic health.
“We were able to touch these little pockets of needs throughout campus that weren’t really addressed previously,” Khan says. “The Bakke was quite a large undertaking, but I think we did something pretty incredible with it.”
Listen to the latest episode of GridgeFridge to hear more from Khan about the recreation center, how the facility promotes inclusivity and holistic health and how the Bakke has been utilized by students since its opening.