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AN visits Studio Gang, whose adaptive reuse projects are reinvigorating the past

Ganging Up On Higher Ed

AN visits Studio Gang, whose adaptive reuse projects are reinvigorating the past

A rendering of the ground floor of the University of Kentucky School of Design’s conglomerated facility, slated to open in 2022 (Courtesy Studio Gang)

In a recent interview with AN, Jeanne Gang, founding partner and principal of Chicago-based architecture and urban design office Studio Gang, described adaptive reuse design as a delicate process of responding to the creations of the past. When approaching adaptive reuse projects, architects have to ask, “What’s already there? What do we give back in return?” While architects can’t control every result of the design process, they have a responsibility to cultivate the best possible outcome of interactions between created space and the natural environment.

Amid rising concerns about climate change and carbon emissions, reuse is becoming a powerful tool for architects to imagine economical and sustainable visions for the future. Over a decade ago, Gang and Juliane Wolf, design principal and partner at Studio Gang, were reusing architecture at the material scale, salvaging building remnants like glass, rebar, and slag in new construction. Today, they’re scaling up their reuse practices, retrofitting entire buildings for new programs. In this way, change and adaptation have become part of the preservation process, recycling yesterday’s buildings for tomorrow’s use.

University of Kentucky School of Design

Rendering of a maker space in a college designed by studio gang
The University of Kentucky’s new maker suite (Courtesy Studio Gang)

For the University of Kentucky (UK) College of Design, like many public institutions, real estate options are slim and budgets are tight. The college was struggling to bring its departments together and develop relationships on and off campus. To fulfill UK’s demand for growth and solve pedagogical concerns within the college, Dean Mitzi Vernon sought to situate all programs in one building for the first time in 50 years. The new building fosters more ways for departments to engage and experiment with each other by sharing space and amenities. The design solution actualizes ideas of equity and inclusion by connecting with what’s existing, available, and viable.

Said Vernon, “There was no way I could repair the pedagogical problem [or growth problem] if I didn’t bring people together. And part of that was giving everybody equity in space.” The school turned to an unused tobacco warehouse on the edge of campus to house a “21st-century polycultural learning environment.”

The design’s major architectural features go hand in hand with strategic programming. For example, a central vertical atrium capped with skylights will allow a grand staircase to puncture three levels, letting in natural light and creating high visibility between the college’s maker suite and shared studios. All School of Design students will engage in a foundational design studio before choosing a discipline. This creates an even playing field to access and explore design making and knowledge sans vocational silos early on.

In addition, Vernon formed a product design program that will connect to a biomedical engineering program at UK’s medical campus (a collaboration set in motion by an initiative to create personal protective equipment during the pandemic). Expected to open in fall 2022, the new College of Design will be home to architecture, interiors, historic preservation, landscape architecture, urban design, and product design.

Beloit College Powerhouse

Photo of the new beloit college center on a river, with smokestack
The new student center at Beloit College fronts Rock River and draws on the nearby water for heating and cooling. (Tom Harris/Courtesy Studio Gang)

When a former power plant was decommissioned in 2010, Wisconsin’s Beloit College saw the potential to create a needed third space for students focused on health and recreation. Now the Beloit College Powerhouse, the building houses sizable amenities like a suspended three-lane running track, an eight-lane competition swimming pool, a field house, and a former coal bunker turned into a climbing wall. These programmatic zones cross through layers of construction in the century-old building, in effect shrinking the industrial complex to generate more human-scale connections.

The building uses the adjacent Rock River for most of its heating and cooling needs, minimizing total energy use. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the Powerhouse is an active space for students with ample room for social distancing.

Kresge College Renewal

Rendering of college dorms arranged like a small town with white buildings, designed by studio gang
Rendering of the village-like structure of Kresge College (Courtesy Studio Gang)

Compared with Beloit, the Kresge College Renewal in Santa Cruz, California, is at a delicate scale and has a sensitive history. Kresge College was originally designed in 1971 by Charles Moore and William Turnbull. Studio Gang opted to engage in dialogue with the existing postmodern village rather than disown its architectural significance. In a series of town hall meetings to engage students in participatory design processes, Studio Gang continued the project’s origin story as an experimental environment for education.

The biggest challenge of the project was adding a sizable academic and residential program—12 renovated buildings, four new construction—to a venerated site. Original campus buildings will undergo subtle renovations that focus on durability and environmental performance updates. New buildings will bend around redwood trees to minimize removals, and the natural canopy will provide strategic building shade. Working with the fragile ecology and expanding Kresge’s historic runnel system, circulation pathways will work with the site’s topography to direct, capture, and filter stormwater for reuse.

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