Trinity University Business & Humanities District

Trinity University’s Business and Humanities District realizes a vision for a cohesive and vibrant interdisciplinary academic district. The architects renovated two historic midcentury buildings designed by O’Neil Ford—Chapman and Halsell Halls—and added Dicke Hall, a new mass timber facility, to complete the campus’s academic spine. Renovations transform traditional classrooms into active, hybrid learning environments, while previously underutilized areas become collaboration hubs. Glass, operable partitions, and new skylights make learning visible, foster connection, and bring daylight deep into the buildings. The district extends Trinity’s tradition of thoughtful, sustainable campus design, with mass timber supporting structural innovation and providing a warm, expressive materiality. The projects support university goals for reducing embodied and operational carbon: Together, they increased campus square footage by 42 percent while raising overall energy use by less than one percent.

“The dialogue here between the brick and the timber as well as the scale and what it does for the holistic sustainability across the entire campus is an extraordinary story. There was such care and thought at every single way of approaching sustainability, from embodied carbon and energy use to resilience, rainwater, and the pedestrian experience. It’s outstanding.” —Ashley Rao, AIA

View the full Design Awards submission