Cannady Hall shapes up for February completion

By Viola Hsia     1/16/24 9:37pm

Over a year since ground was first broken on the new Cannady Hall, the building is still being constructed. According to Dean of Architecture Igor Marjanović, the vision first outlined to the Thresher and the student body is starting to take shape.

“We are actually pretty close to the completion of the building, which is very exciting for us,” Marjanović said in an on-site interview with the Thresher. “Right now, the contractor is putting on the facade, primarily the red terracotta, which you see on the upper floors. The idea is that the red terracotta echoes the traditional brick architecture of the campus without being exactly the same. It’s both contemporary, but it has a little nod to history.”

According to Marjanović, the building plans to have three primary spaces: a fabrication studio, a two-story public gallery facing Valhalla and a collaborative space for students and faculty to work on projects. The new building will also be connected to Anderson Hall through a walkway on the second floor, which will also serve as a “pinup” studio for students.

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“For our school, it was very important to add this new facility, but to keep a sense of community and culture,” Marjanović said. “This building will be crucial for the next phase of the development of the school, primarily in the fact that it’ll allow us to produce research in different [and new] ways.”

According to the Vice President for Finance and Administration Kelly Fox, the building was planned to be completed in October. However, due to unforeseen site and weather conditions, the project was pushed back.

“There was a little bit of weather that found its way into the project early on, that kind of delayed some things,” Fox said. “Now we’re looking at February when it should be complete.”

Stuti Mehta, a junior architecture student from Lovett College, said that the construction has created a few minor inconveniences, including noise and no access to meeting places such as the courtyard right outside Anderson Hall. Despite this, she says that she is excited for the new building.

“For a lot of us, it’s very exciting. We’ve had only one building since the 1980s, the last time we’ve had some sort of renovation,” Mehta said. “We’ve heard that we’re going to have a bigger fabrication area. A lot of what we do requires modelmaking, or just physical building, so we’re glad that we’re getting more space [for that].”

According to Marjanović, the site’s formal dedication is scheduled for Sept. 12. He added that he is excited for what the building will represent for the School of Architecture and the larger community.

“This building, with this kind of aspirational focus [of] fabrication, exhibition, curation and research, really allows us to project [architectural] research forward into the community and make a case as to why it matters,” Marjanović said. “We live in a world where issues are very complex, and architecture is sort of in the middle of trying to sort of address them in a way that brings different forms of knowledge together and makes it very visible how these solutions and proposals could look different. I think this building will be really critical for us to be able to do that both in a beautiful, productive way.”

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