UNC Chapel Hill’s new medical education building offers seminar rooms and midsize classrooms

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has unveiled a new medical education building, Roper Hall. Designed by The S/L/A/M Collaborative (SLAM) and Flad Architects, the UNC School of Medicine’s new building intends to train new generations of physicians through dynamic and active modes of learning.

“We studied what medical students need to really succeed in today’s world and reverse-engineered a design that provides the space to prepare future physicians,” Kimberly Robidoux, higher education practice leader, SLAM, said in a statement.

A notable feature of the 172,000-sf facility: It has no lecture halls. Instead, Roper Hall offers 16 seminar rooms and six medium-size classrooms.

Roper Hall also features an active learning theater, which SLAM describes as the building’s crown jewel. The learning theater, which can house up to 240 people, serves the design emphasis on creating spaces for first- and second-year students to meet and work together. The learning theater doubles as an event space and has become the main location for the school’s annual Match Day, when students are paired with their residency programs.

To support the school’s active learning curriculum, SLAM has designed multiple simulation labs and a clinical skills center for inter-professional training. The simulation labs include large operating rooms and patient care bays with video monitoring to track student progress.

Focus group sessions with over 50 students and committees informed the eight-floor building. This engagement led to the creation of spaces such as the medical student commons—a lounge equipped with a kitchenette, ping-pong tables, TV screens, and banquette seating. Based on student feedback, the design team also incorporated a café and a fitness center.

The design draws on UNC’s surrounding landscape and community. On entry, terrazzo flooring contains crushed seashells that evoke North Carolina’s coast. A nod to the state’s many forests, wood treatments accentuate the active learning theater. And on every floor, large-format photography captures the state’s landscapes.

On the Building Team:
Owner: The University of North Carolina School of Medicine
Architect of record, design architect, co-interior architect: Flad Architects
Medical education planner, co-interior design architect: The S/L/A/M Collaborative
MEP and structural engineer: Affiliated Engineers
General contractor: T.A. Loving

UNC Chapel Hill’s new medical education building offers seminar rooms and midsize classrooms—and notably, no lecture halls — Surrounded by health science research facilities, Roper Hall at the UNC-Chapel Hill campus is a centralized education space for the School of Medicine. Credit to Edward Caruso Photography.

In September 2021, Penn reopened its renovated and expanded library as an open center for cross-disciplinary learning, prototyping, and collaboration. Now called Biotech Commons, the 17,000-sf building supports new modes of research by offering a range of spaces and services that is free to be scheduled by any student or faculty member.

University Buildings | Feb 17, 2022

A vacated school in St. Louis is turned into a center where suppliers exchange ideas

In 1871, The Carondelet School, designed by Frederick William Raeder, opened to educate more than 400 children of laborers and manufacturers in St. Louis. The building is getting a second lease on life, as it has undergone a $2 million renovation by goBRANDgo!, a marketing firm for the manufacturing and industrial sectors.

University Buildings | Feb 15, 2022

Ohio University's Chilled Water Plant #3 brings high design to a campus utility

Leers Weinzapfel Associates has also designed chiller plants on the campuses of Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, Tufts University, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Harvard University’s Allston Campus, and the Ohio State University.