Day Hall is a new three-story multi-purpose facility to serve Mars Hill University and surrounding communities. This brick-clad structure was carefully detailed and designed to blend with the historic university’s campus and the town of Mars Hill’s Main Street buildings. Day Hall includes new classrooms and seminar rooms, student, faculty and staff gathering spaces, the university bookstore, a cafe, black box theatre, and a connecting lobby and accessible entry to the existing MHU Owen Theater building. Site amenities include an outdoor streetside dining area for the café, a veteran’s memorial, and wide sidewalks with new street trees and bicycle racks. Since opening in 2016, Day Hall has become a primary gathering center for students, faculty, staff, and visitors to Mars Hill University.

Legerton Architecture provided full architectural services for the project from predesign, programming and schematic design through construction phase services. We led a participatory design process throughout each design stage, leading numerous meetings with the public, Town of Mars Hill representatives, and the university students, faculty, and staff. This process was instrumental in helping to develop the public support for a zoning variance on this high-profile site and was also crucial in building consensus and support within the university community.

Day Hall’s sustainable design features include daylighting strategies utilizing light shelves and solar shading devices, occupancy sensor-controlled LED lighting, high-efficiency HVAC system and plumbing fixtures, high levels of insulation, operable windows, permeable pavers, a rain garden and native plantings.