In an article written for the November 2017 issue of College Planning & Management, Nate Appleman, AIA, director of HOK’s Sports + Recreation + Entertainment practice, describes the benefits of hybrid facilities on college campuses.
Excerpted from the article:
As schools like Notre Dame and Wisconsin have shown, opportunities for collaboration between administrators and athletics can elevate collective campus facility needs to create projects that serve a broader set of students. But how does a school move toward creating one of these hybrid, multipurpose facilities?
The process can be challenging. A broad set of users must be engaged early to build consensus and better understand synergies and challenges. Campus architects and planners are often best equipped to lead the charge, orchestrating conversations with key decision makers and bridging potential silos well in advance of the project moving forward. Often, too, it takes bringing in early an outside design and consulting team that has experience on these types of projects and can help all stakeholders comprehend and imagine the full scope of the project.
“We often talk about the unprecedented value of spontaneous interactions in the research world. Campuses are no different,” says Chris DeVolder, managing principal of HOK’s Kansas City office, who has worked on numerous multipurpose facilities on college campuses, including Notre Dame’s Campus Crossroads. “When we bring professors from different fields together with researchers, administrators and athletes, we begin to uncover what’s best about universities—the diversity of thought processes and experiences.”