The new home for the College of Design at the University of Kentucky (CoD) has been inaugurated after a two-year project led by Studio Gang. 

Their makeover of the Gray Design Building turned a former tobacco warehouse at the edge of campus into a new hub for learning and collaboration. It is the first to consolidate space for all four CoD departments and the department of landscape architecture under one roof since 1965.

The adaptive reuse project provided a unique teaching opportunity for students, retaining the existing masonry walls, foundation, timber columns and beams, and steel trusses used in the former Reynolds Building's original 1917 construction. 

Studio Gang was able to work multiple interventions into the 132,000 square foot volume, remaking the ground-floor with a large, double-height lecture hall, small art gallery, and flexible classroom while placing studio spaces above in the second level, connected to each other a via central stair. 

The firm views it as a "demonstration that reconciling past and future isn’t simply a matter of environmental necessity, it can also be a satisfying creative act of design and making."

A canopy helps extend from the building to cover a new indoor-outdoor fabrication dock that connects to other workshop spaces. The project was made possible after a $5.2 million gift from local developers Gray Construction. Founder Jeanne Gang says: "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."

This is a highly sustainable design that uses energy at rates 70 to 80% lower than a conventional higher education design. In in its placement, it also serves to activate a new gateway between the campus and downtown Lexington. The addition of geothermal wells and introduction of a new high-performance envelope were also essential to bringing the CoD's capabilities into the 21st century.

Studio Gang is also currently at work on other higher education designs for Harvard and Stanford University and looking to add a Licensed Interior Designer to its Chicago office via Archinect Jobs.