Now is the time to focus on physical space planning as the key lever in your programmatic transformation.

While an increasing number of schools and universities across the US are planning to reopen this fall, administrators and educators face countless questions and considerations to address in just a few short months: What’s our approach? How will we maintain social distance and still care for urgent community needs such as food and technology distribution, transportation and intermittent closures? How will we create a flexible, adaptable environment that is learner-centered and responds to different types of teaching, particularly in an online or hybrid model?

Programmatically – What’s our plan for instructional delivery? How will we reinvent teaching and learning to deliver effective practice in a new context?

Culturally – How will we foster a sense of community and connection that conveys our core values and nurtures students? In what ways will we engage our community to create user-informed plans for reopening and daily instruction?

At Overland, our goals have always been more than just designing buildings. We are focused on projects that make the world a better place and promote human flourishing. For over 30 years, we’ve partnered with PK – 12 and higher-ed clients to transform the educational experience and put the learner at the center of the equation. We bring our clients into the process, unlocking the embedded potential of their vision to create spaces that are better designed for learning, better for the environment, and better for communities. While much of education has resisted change at scale, we know there’s a better way.

Our Recommendation: Rethink your physical space and how it can be the source of inspiration, curiosity, and learning, even in the midst of COVID. This will require all of us to live outside of a compliance mentality and tap into the embedded potential of our boundless creativity. You simply might need some help — that’s where we come in.

We can help you think through the physical logistics of re-entry in ways that embrace both synchronous and asynchronous learning without compromising the unique learning model of your curriculum or student achievement. At the Episcopal School of Dallas, we worked hand in hand with students, teachers, and staff to discover a new outdoor learning prototype for their campus. This resulted in age specific outdoor classrooms that are immediately accessible by each grade level. At the time, these spaces were planned as special breakout spaces for classes. Now, as ESD imagines re-entry, they can utilize these spaces to facilitate regular classroom lessons in a way that is healthy, safe, and accomplishes their student achievement goals.

This is a critical moment when our schools need effective space planning, agile design, community input and maintaining focus on teaching and learning. Overland has curated a PK-12 team of architects and education industry experts with the design-thinking to help school leaders do more than just return to normal. Our team is focused on reinventing with you, towards unlocking an aspirational future, not your new normal. Here’s are some specific areas:

Adam Bush, AIA Education Innovation Leader adamb@overlandpartners.com	Rick Archer, FAIA Founder & Design Leader rick@overlandpartners.com
Joel Harris PK-12 Education Expert joelh@overlandpartners.com	Benjamin Rosas, AIA Education Design Champion benjamin@overlandpartners.com

Adam Bush, AIA, LFA, LEED AP BD+C
Associate Principal

As the oldest continually operating university in the state of Texas, with a charter dating back to 1845, Baylor University has an international reputation for educational excellence.

The Hankamer School of Business, with more than 4,000 students and 300 faculty members is consistently ranked as one of the top business programs in the country. For decades, the school offered business classes in two older, traditional academic buildings built in the mid-1950s – 60s. Though successful in preparing business leaders for many decades, the existing facilities presented too many limitations. Baylor understood the critical importance of creating a real-world business environment. Envisioning a new business campus founded upon Baylor’s values, the future Hankamer School of Business would exceed the expectations of today’s best and brightest students, promote collaboration, and deliver the progressive academic programs and distinguished faculty synonymous with leading universities and nationally ranked business schools.

As part of a successful fundraising effort that included a historic $35 million gift from Baylor graduate and El Paso businessman Paul L. Foster, Overland Partners was engaged to design a new business school for 21st century learning – a dynamic campus within a campus that replaced siloed programs and inflexible spaces with a forward-thinking approach to collaboration, community and technology. It needed to look, feel and operate much like a Fortune 500 company.

“One of the key goals of this new space was to attract students, staff, and faculty members to spend time building community through collaboration and socializing outside of their classroom and office settings,” said Adam Bush, AIA LFA LEED AP BD+C, Overland’s Project Manager for the Foster Campus.

The architectural design of the 285,000 square foot, four-story Foster Campus emulates current global business environments. At the heart of the structure is a centerpiece atrium. Designed, engineered and tested to alleviate unwanted glare and solar heat gain often associated with atria, the Foster Campus atrium serves multiple functions – a dynamic hub of the business school community, an energy efficient daylit space, and an important component for overall occupant comfort and well-being within the facility.

Working closely with Overland’s sustainability expert, Helena Zambrano Macias, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, CPHC, Bush said, “Our team developed computer simulation models to identify the ideal amount of daylight for the space and deliver an atrium that is fully daylit year-round.” The integration of computer simulation within Overland’s design process proactively addressed potential challenges with atrium daylighting including glare, temperature control, and acoustics. By designing in an assortment of spaces such as individual nooks and perches, rooms for small group gatherings, some of which cantilever into the atrium, these spaces invite collaboration and mirror a modern workplace. The most notable classroom is The Financial Markets Center, a state-of-the-art trading room that simulates the environment of an investment firm with its live ticker-tape displaying constantly changing global stock markets.

I decided to attend Baylor after walking into Foster. I had done a couple of campus tours and none came close to the excitement I felt on my tour of Baylor. I remember how blessed I felt at the opportunity to study and learn in such an amazing facility.

Encircling each floor of the atrium, “retail” spaces that house different academic programs and research centers, are prominently displayed like storefronts in a central business district with glass walls and doors, revealing the buzz of activity. In addition to academic programs, coffee and food vendors, technology centers, and incubator spaces provide retail conveniences to students, faculty and visitors.

Visibility is a key design feature. Students have great views into the collaborative team rooms surrounding the atrium and can determine which are being used or are open for study with others. “The atrium has a very energetic and lively feel and has a spirit of innovation that encourages interactions, exchanges, and collaborative learning,” said Bush.

Within the atrium, five structural concrete pillars displaying ten core values of the business school are part of the building’s superstructure, which enabled the removal of building expansion joints and long-span structural systems. The pillar strategy proved to be an innovative solution that provided substantial cost and time savings while creating an iconic, inspiring feature that both literally and metaphorically holds up the business school.

The Foster Campus boasts an on-site Technology Center (a continuation of the Casey Computer Center) that oversees the Foster Campus’s technology infrastructure and serves the students, faculty and staff by managing equipment and ensuring seamless connectivity. The integrated system is designed to be flexible and adaptable, allowing academic departments to grown and contract without disruption. That foresight paid off with the demands of remote teaching amid COVID-19.

In addition, classrooms were designed to support a wide range of learning environments and styles, allowing faculty to tailor rooms according to their mode of teaching, whether it be lecture, team-based collaboration, or seminar discussion. Furniture can be reconfigured on a weekly or semester basis. Bush said that designing highly flexible classrooms with integrated remote learning capabilities has proven valuable for preparing educators to pivot to teaching from home during the pandemic.

The 350-seat auditorium accommodates a wide range of guest lectures and events, the adjacent Paul and Jane Meyer Conference Center is routinely fully booked for campus events, career fairs, and conferences for business professionals.

To achieve its LEED Gold status, innovative technologies to reduce energy consumption and long-term costs can be found throughout the project. As part of the mechanical systems, Overland, the first firm to use active chilled beams in Texas, utilized this technology within the Foster Campus to reduce equipment and construction material costs while providing a quiet, comfortable, and energy efficient way to heat and cool the facility. The auditorium boasts under-floor air distribution. Variable-air-volume systems complete with economizers are utilized during favorable climate conditions. Low-wattage LED lighting fixtures with daylight dimming controls reduce electrical lighting loads.

“The staff at Overland was willing to listen to our vision and goals. They worked with us to understand what we wanted in the new business school and how to create a design reflective of Baylor and our vision. The building reflects who we are and expresses two forces we wanted to achieve, comfort and professionalism, in the same space,” noted Anthony Lapes, Assistant Dean for Operations at Baylor University – Hankamer School of Business

The $99 million Paul L. Foster Campus for Business and Innovation at Baylor University is a shining example of Overland’s ability to work with a wide-range of stakeholders to unlock embedded project potential where physical transformations lead to human ones. Truly a 21st century campus for the future, Overland delivered a high-performing, state-of-the-art business campus that continues to lead the way in collaborative new pedagogies, sustainable design, and resilience. With student success a top priority, Baylor University has responded soundly to intense IT and remote learning challenges amid the coronavirus, ensuring first-class instructional delivery while generating exceptional operational cost savings with forward-thinking strategies. Since its opening in 2015, the Paul L. Foster Campus for Business and Innovation continues to achieve its vision, evolving into a campus living room and town square for business school students, staff, and faculty.

Awards

• Chicago Athenaeum Green Good Design International Award, 2017
• Architectural Lighting International Daylighting Design Award
• AIA San Antonio Design Award 2017
• AIA San Antonio COTE Award 2017

About the Author

Adam Bush, AIA, LFA, LEED AP BD+C
Associate Principal, Overland
adamb@overlandpartners.com

Adam leads Overland’s Education Area, bringing strategic thinking, innovation and creativity to unlock the embedded potential for our higher-ed clients. His commitment to excellence and servant leadership have contributed to notable projects including the University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts, Baylor University’s Paul L. Foster Campus for Business & Innovation, and projects for Rice University, Trinity University, and Southern Methodist University.

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Baylor School of Business – Human Handprint Case Study

With a sense of restored awareness of humanity in the midst of a global health crisis, one unsurprising refuge has been the arts, which provide us a source of solace and escape and offers connection within communities suspended in solitude.  While countless daily distractions and demands have been set aside, many of us have turned our attention to art and the vital role artists play in capturing and expressing our lives & world.

Overland has long recognized the contributions artists have made in our communities, and as architects, we feel almost intrinsically linked to art and art history. Combining our reverence for the arts with an opportunity to support and collaborate with the San Antonio art community, the Art Program @ Overland was established in 2015 for advocacy of art, architecture, and the significance of the two in union. Core ambitions of the program include promoting local artists, providing alternative opportunities to traditional galleries, and inviting art to guide the architectural design process.   

For 6 years, the program has curated rotating galleries of local artists’ work throughout Overland’s office – the rehabilitated Hughes Warehouse in northern downtown, San Antonio. The program has showcased an assortment of art, including bold textile compositions by 2019 DoSeum Artist-in-Residence Amada Miller, vivid paintings by Rex Hausmann of The Hausmann Millworks, a series of artists with Ruiz-Healy Art including wood-block prints by UTSA professor and former Blue Star Contemporary Berlin Resident Ricky Armendariz, illusory sculptures by Cade Bradshaw of Bridge Projects, prints of typographical humor by the infamous Gary Sweeney, and most recently, gyotaku fish-prints from artists of the San Antonio Zoo’s art co-op, Project Selva.

Each exhibition is launched with a presentation and conversation wherein Overland is introduced to the artist and art-making processes featured in each show. Many of which have been followed by interviews with program directors diving deeper into the artist’s background, conceptual discoveries, career markers, and overall artistic mission. Receptions at Overland offer our art community, local partners, project teams and clients, friends, and families to personally meet the featured artist, tour the exhibition, and engage in dialogue about the processes and ideas presented through the work.

The Art Program @ Overland has also introduced opportunities for the advocacy of both arts & architectural education. Most recently, at the AIA San Antonio Latinos in Architecture Family Design Day 2019, in partnership with the Girl Scouts of Southwest Texas, the program held art-making activities to ideate on the fundamental components of art that shape our built environment. Additionally, the Art Program @ Overland has long promoted continued education for employees, including arts education and touting courses offered by the firm’s neighbors at the Southwest School of Art, of which the Art Program @ Overland has featured educator Margaret Craig’s intricate plastic & print reef installations.

In addition to working with local artists on exhibitions, the art program has established a more formalized voice in campaigning for the integration of art into the practice and composition of architectural design, which has long been a fixture of Overland’s creative process. Collaborating with world-renowned artists across the US on various design efforts, several Overland projects have epitomized the power of art and architecture in union. Most notably are Ellsworth Kelly’s Austin and James Turrell’s The Color Inside Skyspace, in which the two are so seamlessly implemented, the traditional lines of division between the artwork and architecture are indistinguishable. Other projects have empowered opportunities for art to play a featured role in designed spaces, such as Gordon Huether’s Glass Wall at the Bridge Homeless Assistance Center, Ned Kahn’s Feather Wall at the University Health System Downtown Campus, and a large cast of artists featured in curated gallery spaces at the Grande Cheese Home Office & Research Center.

Although young, the Art Program @ Overland celebrates its establishment over the last five years as a unique and growing fixture in the evolving San Antonio art community, as well as a formalized resource and advocate for the context of art in architecture. While looking ahead at this time presents many uncertainties about the nature of the post-pandemic world, the Art Program @ Overland takes a position of optimism and opportunism, inspired by art communities around the world. Local institutions such as Ruby City, McNay Art Museum, and San Antonio Museum of Art have turned trials into triumph, forging ahead with inventive ways to connect quarantined communities with galleries around the world, thus igniting discussion at Overland about new means of art advocacy and access in an increasingly digital world. The Art Program @ Overland’s mission for action in the support and promotion of the arts will continue to expand, outlining innovative, collaborative, and educational opportunities ahead, powered by a tremendous and ever-growing network of local support and enthusiasm.

For inquiries about the Art Program @ Overland, including exhibition opportunities, please contact art@overlandpartners.com

A tight-knit community of educators, students, parents, alumni and board members came together ten times last fall with Overland to look the future of their school straight in the eye. What would the next chapter look like? With a 70-year legacy of providing enriched, holistic PK-12 education, this small private school in urban San Antonio not only had to ponder the future, but seize it.

Our team at Overland learned that Keystone School is more than an educational experience—it is a collaborative, diverse, and inclusive community that maximizes student opportunities, strengthens creativity and individuality, and expands learning beyond classroom walls. Together, we took a deep dive into the engagement process to understand the range of different stakeholder experiences, from being a young student to an alumni, an educator to a parent, and internalized Keystone’s past and how it translates to a meaningful present and  transformational future.

Our approach to stakeholder engagement is through inspired inquiry to capture and understand different stakeholder priorities, identify positions, facilitate consensus, and develop guiding principles to accomplish the vision.

As Education designers, architects and planners, we know collaboration and authentic community engagement is key to creating the best result for clients. But first comes the exercise of gaining a thorough understanding of each client, their mission and vision, something that sets Overland apart from many architectural firms. We hear time and time again from our clients that we actively listen, with no pre-conceived conventions or notions. A deep exploration of stakeholders’ desires is something we strive to do on every project and facilitates Unlocking The Embedded Potential, our brand promise.

“Curriculum and design have to work together, or things fall apart” writes Alexandra Lange in a recent Architecture Magazine article. Thus is case with Keystone and Overland. Building upon a legacy of academic and creative excellence, Keystone partnered with Overland to craft a strategic vision for the historic school’s future that nurtures students, delivers world-class, innovative learning and strengthens the community of Keystone’s campus. The result is a cohesive path forward for the future that will inspire the next generation of life-long learners, leaders and global citizens.