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When University of Oregon students last year rejected a proposal for a fee increase to pay for a renovation and expansion of the student union, SERA Architects Inc. had to create a more affordable project.

As a result, the Portland-based firm developed a more cohesive design for the Erb Memorial Union, senior project designer Walker Templeton said. Reducing the project scope to fit a student-approved, $95 million budget changed the interaction between different parts of the building, he said.

“Originally, we had a little bit too much emphasis on the new,” he said. “Now the focus shifted to that intersection between the old and new.”

A central glass atrium will form a connection between the original building constructed in 1950 and the expansion, Templeton said. This element harks back to the tall windows of the EMU Fishbowl dining area, he said.

“We’ve taken that same vocabulary,” he said. “This will be the place to see and be seen.”

The design aims to make the building’s often confusing layout more navigable and provide more visibility to student groups that have been tucked into the basement and other hard-to-find spots, Templeton said.

“We are shooting for extremely efficient,” he said. “They’ll get twice as much usable space.”

In spring 2012, UO students voted against a proposed $100-per-term fee increase that would have paid for a $135 million project to renovate the EMU and add a performance hall. In the fall, they agreed to a $67-per-term fee increase for a downscaled renovation project, and no performance hall.

Now, plans call for adding 70,000 square feet to the 130,000-square-foot student union. Many elements of SERA’s original design will be included, said Gregg Lobisser, the university’s vice president for capital projects.

“Our goal was to retain the basic concept of the design, not start over,” he said. “We wanted to take advantage of the work our architects had done. We had a really good design. We just had to cut a lot of money from the building.”

SERA started designing the EMU renovation in 2011. The project was put on hold nine months later, when students rejected the fee increase proposal, said Natasha Koiv, an associate principal. The firm restarted design in January, she said.

Construction is scheduled to begin in May 2014 and finish in May 2016, Lobisser said.

Lease Crutcher Lewis, which has a Portland office, will be the contractor.

Much of the work will center on remodeling a past EMU expansion designed by SERA in the 1970s, Templeton said. To prepare for the latest expansion, he met with the SERA architects who designed the previous one.

“It was great insight,” Templeton said. “I was able to sit down and say, ‘What’s up with this building? Why is it like this?’ ”

He learned that architects designed a series of ramps that wind up to lounges where students eat and study to accommodate long cafeteria lines. That is no longer an issue, so the ramps will be removed, Templeton said.

University officials reduced how much the EMU could expand outward, Templeton said, so SERA was forced to maximize use of existing space.

Among the ways SERA achieved this goal was enclosing a breezeway that travels underneath the EMU, Templeton said. Student groups will move into this indoor space, at street level with large windows rather than in the basement, he said.

The decision to enclose the breezeway was a turning point in the design process, Koiv said.

“The basement becomes the main floor of the building; that became an aha moment,” she said.

Windows allow passersby to see activity inside, Koiv said. Also, with the breezeway enclosed, students are funneled into the building, she said.

Presently, “you can’t see anything so people hesitate to go in, but when you go in there’s all these great groups in there,” Koiv said.

A single, main central staircase and a wider, main lobby will make it much easier for students to find their way around a building that currently feels like a maze, Templeton said.

“Way-finding will be very straightforward,” he said.

An extensive part of the design process included determining the best locations within the remodeled building for student groups and services, Templeton said. SERA hosted meetings with representatives from the various organizations housed in the EMU to determine the layout, he said.

The final EMU renovation design takes good advantage of existing space in the building, said Martina Oxoby, a planning associate with UO Campus Planning and Real Estate.

“I think it’s created more efficiencies in space and just a better program planning,” she said. “We’ve kind of relocated programs around and found some better space for them.”

Lobisser said university officials are disappointed that the renovated student union won’t include a performance hall. Nevertheless, he said he’s pleased with how the updated design more seamlessly merges old and new building portions.

“The movement between the buildings is more natural,” Lobisser said. “I think there will be a synergy and attractiveness of the space that we didn’t have prior to the pause and redesign.”