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Washington and Lee University
Williams School of Commerce, Economics, and Politics

A new home for the Williams School brings active learning, student connection, and sustainable design together at an evolving edge of campus.

  • Location

    • Lexington, VA

    Size

    • 45,000 GSF

    Program

    • Classrooms, innovation labs, faculty offices, breakout rooms, student gathering spaces, central hub, outdoor classroom

    Practice area

    Certifications

    • LEED Gold Certified

Creating a home for a growing academic community

The Williams School’s former facilities could not fully support the school’s close faculty-student culture, evolving teaching methods, or need for places where students could gather outside class. The school’s new home gives the undergraduate business program room to grow in a welcoming and highly flexible building. Organized around a transparent, multilevel Hub, the building brings classrooms, innovation labs, faculty offices, breakout rooms, and student gathering areas together in an environment designed for connection.

The building’s openness supports the informal encounters that are essential to a rich campus life: students seeing classmates between courses, faculty meeting students outside office hours, and student organizations using the building after class.

A Hub for connection

At the heart of the building, the Hub creates the social and spatial center that the Williams School had long needed. Open seating, an active central stair, internal windows, and views into adjacent classrooms make movement and activity visible throughout the building. The hub connects the building across three floors, bringing natural light deep into corridors and adjacent workspaces.

The Hub offers a range of places to pause, from highly visible seating overlooking the main entry to quieter, tucked-away zones for focused work.

Designed for active learning

The building’s learning spaces support a shift from traditional lecture-based instruction toward more active, flexible, and collaborative models of learning. Two “innovation labs” open directly onto the Hub, putting the school’s most dynamic learning environments on display.

These spaces were shaped by close collaboration with faculty and users. The design team studied existing learning spaces across campus and listened carefully to what faculty valued, what limited them, and what new classroom models could make possible.

The innovation labs open onto the hub, putting the school’s most dynamic learning environments front and center.
Movable furniture, writable surfaces, and integrated audiovisual systems allow students to work in teams, share ideas, and move easily between modes of learning.
Flexible classrooms pivot from group-based problem solving to discussion-centered seminars to technology-supported presentations.
Mock tiered classrooms use furniture to approximate “caseroom”-style classrooms, but with flat floors that provide greater long-term flexibility.
Faculty offices cluster around shared meeting spaces.
It’s a space designed truly to encourage conversation across different disciplines…and to spark new ideas that prepare us and our students to engage in principled, inclusive, forward-looking leadership in commerce, economics, politics and beyond.
Lena HillProvost, Washington and Lee

Designed for comfort and wellbeing

Sustainable design is embedded in the building’s performance, materials, site design, and occupant experience. A high-performance envelope, daylight-filled interiors, operable windows in offices, efficient building systems, and user controls support comfort while reducing energy demand.

The design also connects performance with wellbeing. Access to daylight, views, fresh air, and a range of comfortable work settings helps create an environment where students, faculty, and staff feel comfortable and connected throughout the day.

Operable windows in faculty offices provide fresh air, natural light, and expansive views.
Healthy, low-emitting materials were specified throughout the building’s interiors.
Native and drought-resistant plants reduce irrigation needs, and an outdoor classroom provides a welcome nature break for small groups.

A new destination at a changing campus edge

The building is sited on a prominent location along a public street. Its presence helps shift Washington and Lee’s center of gravity toward a newly developing area at the south end of campus.

Architecturally, the design balances continuity and change. Brick, white trim, gabled forms, and a dark metal roof connect the building to Washington and Lee’s campus language, while the transparent Hub introduces a more open and contemporary expression. Together, these elements create a building that feels rooted in its heritage campus context while clearly signaling a new chapter for business education.

The glass entry facade makes visible the building’s role as a shared academic home that remains active throughout the day.
Project impact
  • 37.3%

    Energy Use Intensity (EUI) below baseline

  • 0.12

    CFM/sf @ 75 Pa blower door test result, confirming the building’s tight envelope

For more information on this page:

Project Team

Acentech

Code Red Consultants

Collaborative Lighting

Heller & Metzger

Nolen Frisa Associates

Pace Collaborative

Reichbauer Studio Landscape Architecture

Stefura Associates

Thornton Tomasetti

TRC

Photography

Ansel Olson

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