College Opens Campus to Young Architects

BALTIMORE-Top young designers from eight of RTKL’s domestic and international offices are participating in an in-house competition, developing designs for a new $20 million student-residence hall at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).

After the designs are submitted at the end of October, MICA will display them on campus and consider each as the basis for construction of the residence hall, with RTKL as the architect. The 200-student facility could open by the fall of 2006.

Maryland Institute President Fred Lazarus says it’s unprecedented for a large institution to open up the design of a major master-plan component to a competition of this kind, but believes that encouraging young architects makes sense at a design college.

The college’s architectural guidelines call for the creation of a visual gateway to the midtown campus. Possible amenities in the undergraduate hall include meeting and conference facilities, a black-box performance theater, a coffeehouse and a career-development center.