As with many universities, Case Western Reserve University struggles with the “Sophomore Slump”. It is in the second year that students are most likely to drop out. To combat the “Slump”, Case Western Reserve University decided to create the South Residential Village (SRV), a center of gravity for second year students who are currently scattered across the urban campus. The project was started pre-Covid and the project was put on hold. When the project resumed in 2021, escalation and supply chain issues impacted the project and its schedule.

CWRU and the Design team developed a program and plan layout to support community building at multiple scales – the pod, the floor, the building and the district. The South Residential Village will house 600 students and provides amenities – a multi-purpose room to host campus wide events, a wellness center, and several programmed exterior spaces so the Sophomores would have a campus center of gravity and place to call their own. The project is tracking LEED Gold.

The Case Western Reserve University – South Residential Village Tour will consist of a presentation highlighting the vision and goals of the University for the project, summary of the programming and design phase, and conclude with the tour of the construction site.

By late July 2023, tour participants will see the completed framing and large portions of the envelope and glazing installed. The completed large scale visual and construction mock up will be on site. One of the typical room mock ups will be available to view and discuss with the group.

Cost: $60

The tour will begin with a walk through the Student Commons – the heart of the building that also serves as a new primary campus entry from the north parking lots. Here students, faculty, and staff enjoy an atrium daylit though a 100-foot-long, building-integrated photovoltaic skylight; green walls; planter benches, and a wide variety of study spaces suitable for small groups, collaborative, or quiet study. Teaching spaces accessed from the Commons include an Interdisciplinary Teaching Lab and Case Study classroom.

The tour continues with stops in variety of teaching labs including Chemistry, Biology, Earth Sciences, Physics, and Mathematics. Exiting the building from its signature parallelogram east façade stairway, the outdoor classroom will be visited. It is a landscaped space featuring flood-resistant native plantings and seating space designed for outdoor lectures and social gatherings. However, the space is more than a teaching space, it is designed to manage the building’s stormwater – it transforms into a reflecting pool following heavy rain storm events.

Next on the tour, the exterior of the building of the building will be explored. Attendees will understand how the building’s simple rectangular footprint optimizes solar orientation while maximizing the ratio of building envelope to enclosed volume. They will see how a responsible 33% window-to-wall ratio provides natural daylighting while reducing operational energy demands. While every façade shares a common design language, solar orientation differentiates the design of each. Baguettes shade southern glazing, micro-louver screens eliminate glare and mitigate heat gain on east-facing windows, and reflective vertical fins at north-facing windows bounce morning sun into the labs. The PV-ready roof canopy that hovers over three sides of the building effectively shades the building’s upper story while bestowing a distinctive look recalling Prairie-style architecture of the Midwest.

The tour will end at the building’s Sustainability Dashboard where green features of the building are summarized as well as displaying real-time energy, water, and CO2 metrics. Achieving the goal of 70% lower energy use than the national average of buildings of this type and meeting the AIA 2030 Commitment, the building has a EUI of only 74.36 kBtu/sf/year.

Cost: $60

Join planning and architecture professionals from the City of Cleveland and the Greater Cleveland Partnership, the region’s chamber of commerce, on an interactive tour of Cleveland’s downtown waterfronts: Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River. Water is critical to the economy, climate, and quality of life of Northeast Ohioans, yet, for too long, we have turned our back on the region’s greatest asset.

Under new leadership and renewed partnerships, we are rediscovering our waterfronts and their potential. We know that embracing these assets appeals to the next generation of Clevelanders, and by investing now, we can achieve population growth by attracting and retaining talent to secure Cleveland’s future.

Learn how the City’s vision to reconnect the community to its waterfronts will spur population growth, catalyze significant economic opportunity, and benefit the entire region. During this mobile workshop, participants will learn how the prioritization of inclusive redevelopment and significant infrastructure changes that create a transportation network of ‘people over cars’ will enhance Cleveland’s ability to be a great region on a Great Lake.

The walking tour will begin on Daniel Burnham’s Mall C, designed in 1903 and one of the best remaining examples of the City Beautiful movement. The tour will proceed down E.9th Street to North Coast Harbor, home to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Cleveland Browns. The walking tour will end at Nuevo Modern, where attendees are invited to sip margaritas overlooking Lake Erie. An optional bicycle tour will begin from North Coast Harbor in lieu of the happy hour. Participants will ride to the East Bank of the Flats and to Rivergate Park, along a section of towpath along the Cuyahoga River, with the option to end at Brick and Barrel, a local brewery.

Note: This tour will be followed by an optional bike tour limited to 15 people.

Cost: $40

Playhouse Square is the largest performing arts center outside of New York City and home to multiple professional theaters, resident arts organizations, restaurants, businesses, and educational partnerships. A remarkable group of 1920s theaters were saved from demolition and redeveloped over 40 years to create a vibrant arts and entertainment district where a once-deserted downtown area existed. Now the world’s largest theater restoration project and Playhouse Square contributes more than $360 million to the local economy annually. This tour will explore the economic development of Playhouse Square, the renovated historic theaters, and the spaces shared with Cleveland State University, Cuyahoga Community College, and Case Western Reserve University.

Cost: $60

The Liberal Arts & Technology Building is the College’s first expansion of the Westshore Campus. The goals of the project were multi-faceted as the College sought to better serve their growing demographic in western Cuyahoga county.

• To enhance the exterior built environment of the new campus, to be more cohesive and pedestrian focused.
• To improve the quality of public spaces
• To expand the campus’ capacity to meet growing demand. More classrooms and more offices, of course, but even more-so an accommodation for an expanded course offering: more types of classes and spaces for engineering technology, a maker-lab and computer labs.
• To provide an on-campus dining option
• To help accommodate and define future campus expansion

The form of the building is informed by all of these factors. The initial program assessment revealed that due to the desired adjacencies, more square footage should be developed on the two upper floors. These are then supported below by a smaller first floor footprint.

Covered pedestrian-oriented exterior spaces have been carved out on the ground floor level, and the building is curved to define and enclose an outdoor, pedestrian-only zone to the north. This will serve as the “public square” as the campus further expands.

The new building projects to house some of the necessary functions that will be inherent with further campus expansion, including enlarged security offices, expanded facility maintenance office, shipping and receiving, and shared faculty space.

With respect to energy efficiency, the new building has an effective <40% window area and higher performance envelope. The HVAC system also is partially combined with that of the existing building, to economize latent heating and cooling capacity while offering some level of redundancy. Natural daylight harvesting is improved with horizontal exterior louvers reflecting daylight deeper into the spaces, even as they provide shade and work with patterned glass to reduce glare. These efficiencies and more help the College in its goal to achieve LEED Silver.

Overall, the results for the campus have been an enhanced experience for staff, faculty and student body, as the College seeks to serve Cuyahoga County through enhanced workforce training and preparedness.

Design provided by Moody Nolan

Cost: $60

Join Cleveland State University staff and Sasaki’s campus planning team for a tour that will showcase the newly released Master Plan’s vision for a connected urban campus and open space network. The tour will begin in the heart of campus, the Student Center and its outdoor plaza. With an eye to downtown Cleveland, we’ll view the proposed plaza expansion made possible by removing a parking garage and creating an elevated plaza over E 21st Street. We’ll discuss how the Master Plan advances the university as a city and regional economic engine through the addition of a new workforce development building on Euclid Avenue. Attendees will get a chance to walk a portion of the university’s Innerlink, a connected interior pathway through a series of core buildings, while hearing about renovations and new construction for academic, athletic and residential buildings. The tour is scheduled to end at our newest campus building, the Washkewicz College of Engineering where you’ll get a glimpse of collaborative laboratories and classrooms built to LEED Gold standards. Time permitting, we’ll pop into Mather Mansion, one of the few remaining homes from Cleveland’s famous Millionaires’ Row. Completed in 1910, the 45-room Mather Mansion was the largest and most luxurious home built on Euclid Avenue with handcrafted stone, brick and stunning woodwork.

Cost: $60

On May 4, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a group of demonstrators and onlookers at Kent State University. Four were killed and 9 were wounded. While touring campus and the site upon which the demonstration occurred, participants will learn the tragedy and its aftermath, particularly as it affected campus planning and space utilization.

The story of Kent State is one of national and state-level politics, frayed town and gown relations, changing cultural norms, and students clamoring for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. In the wake of the tragedy, administrators struggled to situate Kent State’s newfound status as an icon of state-sponsored violence. Further, the university struggled to determine the both the extent to which and how it would acknowledge and memorialize the tragedy.

The May 4 Memorial was dedicated on May 4, 1990—20 years after the tragedy. Participants will learn of the numerous controversies that plagued the memorializing process, starting with the decision to build a central memorial and moving through the 1986 design competition, university fundraising efforts, and the administration’s decision to build a scaled-back version of the winning design when it failed to raise enough money to build the original winner. Revisiting this contentious history enables us to consider how memorial making reflects divergent opinions among various stakeholders and how memorial making might be placed in the service of promoting nonviolence and social justice. Participants will also learn about how Kent State improved its town and gown relations between 1970 and 2020—a time in which the university partnered with the city of Kent to engage in a building project that connected the campus formally to the city.

Cost: $60