Case Studies Education

Taking a deep breath, yet armed with a steely resolve, Cyndi Smith pushes the City Council Chamber doors wide open. The latest Baltimore School District project is on the table—and as the director of facilities design and construction, she has come to stand her ground, plead her case, or both. Inner Harbor. Fells Point. Midtown. […]

Five years ago, the Sack ‘N Save at the corner of Wilshire and Avenue C in Denton, Texas, looked like any mid-sized grocery store: meat and produce around the perimeter, aisle upon aisle of food and household wares in the middle, all of it illuminated by a battery of fluorescent lights. Should a former customer […]

Walking around the campus, hand in hand with his wife, John Morris is mesmerized. Time stands still on the quad where tawny late afternoon light bathes the classic historic homes that make up the College of Charleston. Soft Spanish moss gently sways in a subtle breeze from trees that have grown here for hundreds of […]

A mechanical engineer with a master’s from the University of Texas and undergrad credentials from Pune University in his native India, Sameer Kapileshwari raised eyebrows among his colleagues when he left a plum private-sector position to direct and manage facilities in academia 17 years ago. “My friends would ask why I’d go to such a […]

Quite the dovetail between the company’s mission and that of its director of real estate and facilities. “From the CEO on down, we live by the motto ‘Making classrooms better places for teachers and students,’” the affable and enterprising Jim Finco tells Blueprint in January. “So I guess my motto would be ‘Making the workspace […]

To a lot of folks in southeast Springfield, Missouri, it’s more than just another library. Known as the Schweitzer Brentwood Branch Library, it’s located in a residential neighborhood rather than on a busy urban street. For decades it has been where countless children have discovered and sustained the joy of reading, and where their parents […]

The prospect of designing a building comes with infinite possibilities, and while this is what makes Paul Felder’s job fun, he believes it can also be a trap. “As an architect, you must know when to stop designing,” he says. “I’m not looking to push people out of their comfort zone or attempting to see […]

There’s more than a smattering of early 1970s idealism that’s sustained in Pennsylvania’s capital city of Harrisburg, and it’s a mindset that can cut across all political, ethnic and demographic lines. After all, most any constituency would favor an already desirable downtown becoming an even more livable and exciting place. And that has been the […]

The common denominator is everyone on campus—students, faculty, administrators, maintenance employees—has to eat, and they all agree it should be a pleasant experience. It hadn’t been that unpleasant at Vassar College; it just could have been better. The private liberal arts school in Poughkeepsie, New York, has long prided itself for forward thinking, but somehow […]

The Northeast power grid has been reliable as of late, but prudent clients don’t take anything for granted. Come heat wave, blizzard or flood, the coastal city of Bridgeport, Connecticut, isn’t likely to have to worry about outages, as the midsummer saw its municipal microgrid nearing completion. With the Branford, Connecticut, company of O,R&L Construction […]