We believe that the Dining Hall is one of the most important buildings on a college campus. These buildings are the places that can create a heart for student life, convene the Residence Hall population as a community; and become a venue for diversity and discourse. The Carvell Architects team will provide strategic design services in a workshop format on campus – facilitating consensus, from our specialization in student life buildings. Our experience designing student life buildings, combined with our consensus building approach, has been successful in creating facilities that bring together students, faculty and staff in exciting, interactive, light-filled and environmentally responsive spaces. The results of this approach are buildings and interior environments that speak to the individual character of each campus.
In our years of working on student life projects, specifically Dining Halls, we have found a number of key planning principles that create successful and dynamic facilities. The Residence and Dining Hall are two facilities that students are guaranteed to enter. As such, it needs to welcome the widest diversity of the college community. Once inside, services, activities and possible interactions should be clearly visible, inviting and accessible to all. The following design principles articulate ways that we have found to achieve a truly interactive facility.
Some of the most effective Dining Halls are situated in ways that encourage students to move through and / or by the building as a natural part of their daily pedestrian path. The creation of a crossroads can significantly reinforce the idea of community for the resident population.
Every project we undertake employs the fundamental principle of sustainability as its cornerstone. We bring an extensive history of sustainable design for Residence and Dining Hall – student life projects. Student life facilities must always balance operational costs with revenue generating programs, which brings a design focus to long-term efficiency and reduced energy use.
Student Residence and Dining Hall facilities have a wide range of programs with differing hours of operation. The layout of these buildings need to recognize these issues to create facilities where users can move through easily without feeling cut off from closed areas. The Dining Hall should be organized so that it can be sequentially closed down without reducing its vitality. Building systems also need to be designed to allow portions of the building to operate separately from others for increased efficiency, separation of food odors, security control and temperature control that responds to wide-ranging peak occupant loading. In the design process, we work closely with user groups to create a security and operations zoning plan that sets strategies for the system’s further design.
The Design Team brings a broad experience base in designing a range of food service platforms, from the open marketplace and display cooking concepts, to more traditional scramble formats. We understand the complexities of combining board dining and retail dining in linked platforms. Our team understands the need for a flexible design aesthetic and infrastructure, to allow future changes (inevitable in the food service industry). We review every aspect of the food service equipment, paying careful attention to the aesthetic of elements presented to the public to ensure cohesive design.
