This school year, Virginia Tech students are greeted with a brand new 101,000-square-foot educational facility and dining hall that houses the Provost’s classrooms, a 33,000-square-foot expansion of the Myers-Lawson School of Construction, student meeting spaces and the highly anticipated 30,000-square-foot Perry Place. Named Hitt Hall, after the project’s primary donor the Hitt Family, the state-of-the-art building pays homage to Virginia Tech’s rich 152-year-old history and culture.

National design firm Cooper Carry provided architecture, interior design, branding, experiential graphics and sustainable design services for Hitt Hall and Perry Place.

Brent Amos, Principal at Cooper Carry said, “We leveraged our mixed-use ecosystem and collaborated across multiple studios to create a unique dining experience full of personality as well as future-forward learning spaces. Our intention was to create an immersive environment where students can thrive and try something new. For the School of Construction, the building was designed as an education and research tool. We enjoy seeing Hitt Hall in use now that students have returned to campus.”

Virginia Tech’s dining program is consistently ranked among the nation’s best. With the goal of furthering its reputation for excellent dining, the school recognized the need for more options to meet demand. The new 30,000-square-foot Perry Place features nine separate dining concepts, and includes a centralized kitchen and seating for more than 600 students. Cooper Carry’s Branding team created brands for eight of the nine concepts, as well as the logo of the dining hall itself.

Perry Place houses a Chick-fil-A and eight novel restaurant concepts representing a variety of cuisines from around the world. Each distinctive dining venue has its own custom brand, interiors and signage, all with thoughtful ties to the university. For example, Addison’s, named after William Addison Caldwell, the first student to enroll at the institution, is a grab-and-go market concept with a logo inspired by the mountains around Blacksburg, VA.

Additional restaurants include AMP, a coffee concept inspired by music and caffeine, designed with neon art installations and shadow boxes depicting the evolution of music technology. Trax Deli takes its cues from Virginia Tech’s Railway Technologies Laboratory; the restaurant’s curved edges are cognizant of a train car. Solarex is a classic American diner named after a term referenced in Virginia Tech’s spirit cheer known as “Old Hokie.” Fresh & Feta is influenced by Mediterranean gods and goddesses and has a chiseled typographic logo referencing incised marble. The Italian restaurant Veloce, meaning speedy in Italian, was named by Virginia Tech marketing students and features a large-scale photograph of an Italian street with a Veloce sign edited in, immersing students into the ethos of the brand. Barbecue restaurant Smoke’s logo is designed to look like a smoker, with interior elements such as textured metal and stained concrete balanced with clean lines reminiscent of a backyard BBQ.

Lastly, the school and design teams worked with Chef Mai Pham when designing the Pan Asian restaurant Rambutan. Lanterns are used as light fixtures, curated photos from Chef Pham’s personal collection line the walls and a variety of graphics and materials help communicate the style and character of the various Asian foods and ingredients students can experience.

“Hitt Hall serves an important function to the entire Virginia Tech community,” said Brian Kleiner, Preston and Catharine White Professor and Director of the Myers-Lawson School of Construction. “Through Cooper Cary’s design, we are able to see increased visibility for the construction industry through our state-of-the-art laboratories and classrooms. Additionally, the facility supports faculty cross-collaboration and cutting-edge research in the construction field. This building is a continuation of Cooper Cary’s partnership with Virginia Tech and their willingness to support our students both on their educational journeys and through thoughtful building design.”

The 33,000-square-foot Myers-Lawson School of Construction allows the college to double enrollment in the top ranked program. The facility features state-of-the-art innovation and discovery spaces tailored for construction education and research. Additionally, the building’s unique two-story Procon Innovation Center is designed to support large-scale, research and student-led projects and foster hands-on learning and collaboration. The innovation lab features a 5-ton crane, two one-ton jib cranes, and a large hangar door for access to the innovation plaza located to the lab’s south. The innovation plaza doubles the capacity of the interior for additional construction projects and research space. A full-scale building wall mockup already adorns the plaza, illustrating the innovative work ongoing within the college.

The project also features state-of-the-art technology-enhanced classrooms that enable students to participate in hands-on learning. The third floor construction studio classrooms enable team-based projects where students estimate, plan and schedule complex capstone construction projects that prepare them for professional careers. During the design and construction phases of Hitt Hall, the design team worked with faculty to use the project as a teaching and research tool.

Cooper Carry served as guest lecturers on the design process and Construction Manager (CM) at risk project delivery method. Cooper Carry and Virginia Tech intend to continue to collaborate, using the building for future course material and research initiatives. The building features exposed building systems to highlight construction means and methods, another example of the project as a learning tool.

In addition to its specialized construction spaces and classrooms, Hitt Hall boasts flexible general assignment classrooms and open collaboration zones that are accessible to the broader university community. These spaces are designed to accommodate a variety of teaching and learning styles, enhancing the academic experience for students across disciplines. The Cooper Carry team helped Virginia Tech program the spaces and worked with campus facilities and AV/IT group to ensure the classrooms are equipped with the latest technological advances that seamlessly integrate into the current campus IT standards.

The exterior of Hitt Hall blends seamlessly with the remainder of the century-old campus. The building’s design is a modern interpretation of collegiate Gothic architecture with its facade encased with glass, metal panels, precast concrete and “Hokie Stone,” the signature dolomite that defines the campus buildings and is a product of Southwest Virginia geology. Hokie Stone is designed with buttressed piers, a signature feature of college gothic architecture. Large expanses of curtain wall maximize daylight and views from within the building.

While the project is a single building, it required a distinct image and character for the Myers-Lawson School of Construction and Perry Place Dining Hall. This was achieved through subtle variations in the two wings’ window and wall design, as well as distinct towers for each of the wings. The scale of the building steps down along the campus infinite loop, a pedestrian path that encompasses the campus, with two north-facing terraces for outdoor dining and seating.

Three separate towers indicate primary entry points and distinguish the three distinct functions within the building. The Myers-Lawson School of Construction, Hitt Hall tower directly relates to the architecture of the existing school of construction building with its squared precast concrete cap on top of two Hokie Stone piers. The two towers of the dining and provost classroom wings are adorned with the more traditional crenelated precast concrete over buttressed stone. Each tower is adorned with different heraldry designed by the brandings and graphics group to represent the programs within the building. Three separate interpretive fractal patterns represent the nourishment received in dining, knowledge gained in the provost classrooms, and complex molecular structures of construction materials. A graphic of grains of wheat represents the nourishment students and faculty receive from within. A fractal pattern represents the complex geometries of construction materials under the microscope.

For more information, visit Virginia Tech’s website at vatech.edu.

Cooper Carry provides architecture, planning, landscape architecture, interior design, experiential graphic design, branding and sustainability consulting services. Founded in 1960, the firm specializes in the design of education, government, hospitality, mixed-use, office, residential, restaurants, retail, senior living, science + technology, and transit projects. The firm has designed projects in 45 states and globally in the Caribbean, Middle East, Asia, Africa and Central America. Cooper Carry approaches its work as a collaborative ecosystem. Its multiple studios and services come together daily to provide each project the depth of knowledge needed to meet and exceed objectives. Cooper Carry’s leaders are advocates and authorities for their specialties, empowered by decades of expertise to make decisions that prioritize placemaking, civic space, and the greater good of communities, tenants, residents and visitors. For more information, visit Cooper Carry’s website at coopercarry.com and follow the design firm on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.