Dublin Center & Library Renovations, Middle Georgia State University

The project

The Dublin Center was built as a hospital, and sixty years later its bones showed it: a double-loaded corridor 42 feet deep, an 11'-4" floor-to-floor height, and a double row of steel columns at 12 feet on center. A 1980s acoustic ceiling — added with the first air conditioning — had pressed the corridors down to an oppressive eight feet.

The design worked with those constraints rather than against them. The 20-bed Nursing Lab and Simulation Facility runs the full depth of the building, terminating the first-floor corridor at its entrance. On the second floor the corridor jogs to one side to gain the depth the biology and chemistry labs required — putting them under the roof, where supply and exhaust air could reach them directly. All mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and life-safety systems were replaced, integrated to restore the original ten-foot ceiling height.

A large assembly space in the attached Library Building became a 100-seat nursing classroom designed for multiple configurations and community use. The results were measurable: the university expanded annual nursing admissions in Dublin from 60 to 100 and added a BSN program, formally dedicating the expanded health-sciences campus in January 2023. Two years after moving in, the director of commuter campuses judged it directly: "we have a much improved facility that has helped to foster growth in our nursing program and continues to win praise from visitors."