Cuyahoga Community College Westshore Campus

This project was featured in the October 2021 issue of ARCHITECT.

As the largest postsecondary institution in greater Cleveland, Cuyahoga Community College enrolls approximately 60,000 students across four main campuses: Metropolitan, Eastern, Western, and Westshore. Known locally as Tri-C, the college recently refocused its efforts to provide a comprehensive educational experience to its students, 37% of whom identify as people of color. It also recognized in its latest sustainability plan “that its commitment to education and community includes a sense of responsibility to [the] environment.”

Located in the city’s outskirts, the Westshore Campus hosts Tri-C’s Health Careers and Sciences Building on its extensive green space, which has a large freeway presence. Within a few years of its 2011 completion, the campus had experienced significant growth and needed to enter the second phase of its three-phase master plan.

Columbus, Ohio–headquartered Moody Nolan not only focuses on achieving “diversity by design” but also exemplifies it through its staff members—42% are women and 31% people of color—and its ongoing support of underserved and diverse communities and institutions. By understanding Tri-C’s diverse needs and culture, the country’s largest African American–led design firm—also this year’s AIA Architecture Firm Award winner—was ideally suited for the institution’s project.

In 2017, Tri-C selected Moody Nolan to complete Phase II of its Westshore Campus master plan, which would add the Liberal Arts and Technology Building, which would connect to the HCS Building and consolidate classes within the complex. Through meetings with project stakeholders, Moody Nolan refined “how the campus would grow, leveraging the land and nearby freeway,” says firm principal Jon Guldenzopf, AIA, who served as the project’s lead designer.

The new, high-performance 91,200-square-foot addition creates a cohesive environment for its students and offers more than 30 classrooms, laboratories, a dance studio, faculty offices, and dining. Its curved appearance stems and diverges from the existing HCS Building and forms boundaries that frame the freeway and green space.

A promenade on the building’s north side defined by a recessed covered pathway supplies shaded space for studying and dining with views of nature. Continuous bands of glazing provide abundant daylight inside, minimizing the need for electric light. Interior wall textures, motifs, and colors also nod to nature.

Moody Nolan also renovated 17,000 square feet of the original 65,000-square-foot HCS Building, including offices, a library, labs, and tutoring spaces. The firm then created a seamless transition between the existing and new environments.

The project’s sustainability features include LED fixtures, efficient heating, cooling, and plumbing systems, on-site stormwater management, the use of local and recycled materials, and a “green cleaning” policy. The LAT Building earned LEED Silver certification, marking the seventh building on Tri-C’s campuses to achieve recognition from the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED rating system.