Learning Experience

We've designed dozens of education spaces over the last several decades. We enjoy the challenge not only of creating visually interesting buildings but integrating them into an existing campus in a way that makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Our recent work with the Tennessee College of Applied Technology (TCAT) provides several examples. Each of the two facilities, to be completed in early 2018, serves not only its targeted constituency but enhances the surrounding campus.

The first, the 11,850 square-foot Allied Health Building, is located on the TCAT Dickson campus. The new building dramatically changes the street presence of the existing campus, while providing new classroom and simulation laboratory space for the school’s nursing and dental programs. The facility is oriented to create a new entrance courtyard for both the existing campus and the new building. In addition to the nursing and dental classrooms, new spaces are created to simulate patient care spaces for both programs, and allow students and instructors to interact within a clinical environment. The new lobby and gathering space serves not only the nursing and dental students but the broader school community as well.

The second facility, a 12,310 square-foot diesel building, is located at the main campus and provides specialized space for training in the maintenance and repair of diesel engines, particularly for commercial trucking. Two classrooms flank a 6-bay repair facility, and a specialized testing bay houses a dynamometer, which allows in-place testing of a truck cab running at highway speeds. Electronic simulators and training equipment, RFID tool tracking, and the latest A/V components integrate technology throughout the instructional environment. The facility takes initial design cues from the adjacent campus, but integrates updated materials and prominently features the dynamometer testing bay as a visual centerpiece aligned with the student entrance to the campus.

We are currently working on several additional TCAT projects in Dickson and Nashville as well as projects in Hartsville, Hohenwald, Livingston, Pulaski and McMinnville.