Tight Schedule, Lofty Goals:

How 2enCompass Took a College from Art to Design in Just 10 Weeks

Consider for a moment that a 2,500-square-foot home can take six months to build. Now imagine completing a building almost five times that size in just 10 weeks. That’s just what happened between May and August 2007, when 2enCompass Integrated Design and Construction, a business partnership between SHP Leading Design (SHP) and Messer Construction, gutted and renovated the 21,000-square-foot Dorothy Meyer Ziv Art Building at Cincinnati’s College of Mount St. Joseph.

According to Dick Thomas, principal designer on the Mount St. Joseph project, 2enCompass was created to allow both SHP and Messer Construction to offer integrated design and construction services—an important benefit when time is at a premium.

“Because we work so closely together, we can plan things more efficiently. We can make decisions about construction sequence and timing that a traditional process that is designed, put out to bid and then constructed simply can’t afford,” says Thomas.

Refining a vision

And the project at the Catholic liberal arts college, known locally as “Mount St. Joe,” was a big one. “We wanted to upgrade the infrastructure. We wanted to maximize space within the current square footage. And we wanted to reconfigure the classrooms and make them very flexible,” says Anne Marie Wagner, the college’s CFO. “We wanted these kids to start working in the type of environment that they would actually be in when they left the college and went to work.”

The reinvented art building creates space for classic curriculum, such as pottery, and new programs such as interior and graphic design.

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The art building was constructed in the early 1960s for a curriculum focused on fine arts such as pottery, painting and textiles. As years passed, programs in interior and graphic design began to attract more students, but the facility had never been upgraded to reflect that change.

“It was very compartmentalized,” says Beth Belknap Brann, associate professor of graphic design. “Only three of the classrooms at the old building were usable for design classes in that there were desks that you could put a laptop on. You can have a great place for ceramics, painting and sculpture, but you can’t have a design room in those classrooms.”

Respecting the college’s fine arts legacy while accommodating the needs of newer courses required careful efforts at compromise. SHP led an exhaustive planning and envisioning effort—not just for the building, but also for the classes that would eventually take place within it.

“The whole visioning effort was trying to reconcile the fact that the building was designed for a curriculum that had gone through tremendous change and growth through the years,” says Thomas. “We were targeted toward trying to establish what the curriculum was going to be like in the future.”

To help the Mount St. Joe community better envision the actual renovation, 2enCompass used Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology, software that incorporates all electronic documents into a single, virtual three-dimensional model. BIM makes instant visual representations available, such as animated walk-throughs, 3D presentation views, and multiple design perspectives, and allows clients to see designs and changes within hours instead of days or weeks.

“2enCompass was able to provide us with a visualization of our building in the very early stages of design,” says Wagner. “That is something we typically didn’t see until after the design was complete.”

An Exchange of Ideas

Why try to accomplish so much in so little time? It seems impractical, but it was actually quite the opposite. “Originally, we talked about doing it in phased parts over three summers,” says Wagner. “But SHP figured out that there would be over $300,000 in materials cost savings if we were to do it in one summer. So we bit the bullet and did it.”

No doubt the 2enCompass promise of “On time, on budget. We guarantee it” was welcomed at this juncture.

As Wagner remembers, “Faculty and students had to be out of the building by May 7, which was the week before graduation. SHP worked all summer, and we had the movers back in there on August 14. It was incredible.”

Students started the academic year in classrooms grouped according to study rather than scattered throughout the building. A more open classroom plan helps to replicate the design of ad agency environments where students might someday work after graduation. In addition, ductwork was exposed to give the building what Thomas calls a more “sculptural” feel.

“I like to call it the ‘loft look,’” says Wagner. “The floors are polished concrete. The rooms are very large, and we made them flexible so that as art changes, even in the next five years, I think we’ll be able to use the space that we have.”

“The open floor plan has allowed this kind of free entrance and exit between classrooms. You really have a sense of, ‘We’re all in this together’; it’s not pods of classes,” says Brann. “We can go into each other’s classrooms much more easily. There’s a whole sense of exchange that’s happening.”

Inspiring Design

Now that specific floors are home to specific disciplines, it’s easier for students to focus on their studies. “I can remember the past two years where I had to change classrooms completely, going to another room to use a projector and losing about 15 minutes,” says Ryan Averbeck, a junior studying graphic design and business administration. “Now it’s all in the classroom so we can just come in and get to work.”

To help accommodate future changes in art curriculum, an open, loft-style design was created.

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Faculty members are reaping the benefit of localization, too, says Brann. “All of our offices are near each other, and that is so great,” she says. “If you haven’t had that, you don’t realize what it’s like to be right next door to people and say ‘Hey,’ to exchange ideas hot off the presses.”

Moreover, laptops and other technology are better supported in classrooms boasting enough outlets for every student to plug in a laptop. “They are really media-friendly rooms,” says Averbeck.

This being an art building, there are purely aesthetic improvement as well, of course. Brann’s favorite part of the building is now the hallways, set at angles that she thinks add energy to the space. Wagner calls the expanded student gallery with new lighting “the neatest thing.”

“You enter the studios through the gallery, where the students’ work is always on display,” says Thomas. “So there’s a nice opportunity to experience the products of the building.”

“We are the only gallery on the west side of Cincinnati,” Wagner points out. “It’s a wonderful opportunity for us to bring the community into the college.”

But the biggest change at the Dorothy Meyer Ziv Art Building may be more intangible than new rooms and hallways. Says Brann, “The campus has recognized that design is a big component of the art department. We are now recognized entities on campus, and our students see that they are valued.

“Our old department name was the Art Department, and we are now the Department of Art and Design,” she says. “That says it all.”