McDaniel College ROJ Student Center Renovation

McDaniel College expressed a desire to design a space that brought students, faculty, and visitors together through a variety of gathering arrangements. Beginning with a renovated architectural canvas that was essentially wide open, the interior design challenge was to create intimate individual spaces for a wide variety of functions while maintaining visual connectivity throughout the open volume. The goal was to create a “sense of space within the space” for McDaniel’s student body to gather, study, collaborate, feast, and socialize.

Marshall Craft Associates (MCA) completely changed the energy of the space by highlighting natural light sources and views—achieved by removing walls and relocating offices—and selecting an updated color palette for furniture and finishes. To ensure a fully cohesive user experience, the team conducted furniture vendor showroom tours, student engagement furniture surveys, and a president’s meeting to finalize the approach and finishes.

Through the use of color and materials, the design successfully created cozy pods of space—each with individual functions. Acrylic panels and divider panels with a play on solids and voids were used to define distinct spaces. Decorative acoustic panels on the walls and ceiling help minimize sound and create compelling visuals and elements of interest. A range of furniture types gives the large open space a more intimate feel.
Through a purposeful selection of exterior materials, MCA also balanced the integrity of McDaniel’s iconic campus with the more modern attributes of the addition. To achieve this cohesiveness, the exterior aesthetic of the sunroom of the adjacent Englar Dining Hall reflects the material selections of the new addition while the new, lower terrace and entry stairway are reminiscent of the original finishes of the outdoor area.

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