Studio Gang has completed the Gray Design Building, the new home of the University of Kentucky’s College of Design. In partnership with K. Norman Berry Associates Architects, Studio Gang has turned a former tobacco warehouse into a contemporary facility for interdisciplinary learning and collaboration.
“Extending the lifespan of existing buildings is one of the most significant ways we can limit our impact on the environment and broaden the creative potential of architecture,” Jeanne Gang, founding partner of Studio Gang, said in a statement. “Our goal was to bridge the building’s past and future by preserving its distinct character while renewing it as a place where creativity can thrive through collaboration.”
Combining the building’s historic qualities with modern features, the project transformed the industrial structure from a single-use setting into a multipurpose space for education and collaboration.
The 132,000-sf, three-story repurposed building offers flexible indoor and outdoor spaces for learning and making. Upon entry, visitors encounter a new central staircase. On the ground floor, gathering spaces include a flexible classroom, gallery for student and faculty work, and double-height lecture hall. On the upper levels, the open-floor plans use the original timber columns as well as mobile walls and furniture to define each studio space.
A new outdoor fabrication dock connects with an interior workshop, providing an indoor-outdoor area for large-scale making and for displaying work. A structural canopy over the fabrication dock allows students to work outside comfortably.
By retaining the structural components, the reuse project reduces the building’s embodied carbon. The Gray Design Building uses several efficient features, such as a new geothermal well system, that will lower its energy use by an expected 70% to 80% compared to a conventional higher education building. Along with the structural canopy, new trees will decrease heat gain and contribute to passive cooling.
The Gray Design Building was formerly the Reynolds Building. Built in 1917, the Reynolds Building operated as a tobacco warehouse for over four decades before the University of Kentucky acquired it in 1959.
Now, for the first time in its history, the College of Design will house its four programs in one building. Located on an underused edge of the campus, the Gray Design Building also strengthens the university’s connection to downtown Lexington.
On the building team:
Owner: University of Kentucky
Design architect: Studio Gang, Chicago
Architect of record: K. Norman Berry Associates Architects
Structural engineer: Brown + Kubican
MEP/FP engineer: CMTA
Construction manager: Turner Construction
Related Stories
| Oct 12, 2010
Holton Career and Resource Center, Durham, N.C.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Special Recognition. Early in the current decade, violence within the community of Northeast Central Durham, N.C., escalated to the point where school safety officers at Holton Junior High School feared for their own safety. The school eventually closed and the property sat vacant for five years.
| Oct 12, 2010
University of Toledo, Memorial Field House
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Memorial Field House, once the lovely Collegiate Gothic (ca. 1933) centerpiece (along with neighboring University Hall) of the University of Toledo campus, took its share of abuse after a new athletic arena made it redundant, in 1976. The ultimate insult occurred when the ROTC used it as a paintball venue.
| Oct 12, 2010
Owen Hall, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Mich.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Officials at Michigan State University’s East Lansing Campus were concerned that Owen Hall, a mid-20th-century residence facility, was no longer attracting much interest from its target audience, graduate and international students.
| Oct 12, 2010
Cell and Genome Sciences Building, Farmington, Conn.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Administrators at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington didn’t think much of the 1970s building they planned to turn into the school’s Cell and Genome Sciences Building. It’s not that the former toxicology research facility was in such terrible shape, but the 117,800-sf structure had almost no windows and its interior was dark and chopped up.
| Oct 12, 2010
Full Steam Ahead for Sustainable Power Plant
An innovative restoration turns a historic but inoperable coal-burning steam plant into a modern, energy-efficient marvel at Duke University.
| Oct 6, 2010
From grocery store to culinary school
A former West Philadelphia supermarket is moving up the food chain, transitioning from grocery store to the Center for Culinary Enterprise, a business culinary training school.
| Sep 16, 2010
Green recreation/wellness center targets physical, environmental health
The 151,000-sf recreation and wellness center at California State University’s Sacramento campus, called the WELL (for “wellness, education, leisure, lifestyle”), has a fitness center, café, indoor track, gymnasium, racquetball courts, educational and counseling space, the largest rock climbing wall in the CSU system.
| Sep 13, 2010
Community college police, parking structure targets LEED Platinum
The San Diego Community College District's $1.555 billion construction program continues with groundbreaking for a 6,000-sf police substation and an 828-space, four-story parking structure at San Diego Miramar College.
| Sep 13, 2010
Campus housing fosters community connection
A 600,000-sf complex on the University of Washington's Seattle campus will include four residence halls for 1,650 students and a 100-seat cafe, 8,000-sf grocery store, and conference center with 200-seat auditorium for both student and community use.
| Sep 13, 2010
China's largest single-phase hospital planned for Shanghai
RTKL's Los Angles office is designing the Shanghai Changzheng New Pudong Hospital, which will be the largest new hospital built in China in a single phase.
