Old Dominion University Engineering and Arts Building — Norfolk

Old Dominion University has secured full state funding for a $250 million Engineering and Arts Building, a five-story facility rising in the heart of its Norfolk campus that deliberately puts engineers and artists in the same building.

Project Scope
The building houses the Batten College of Engineering and Technology alongside the College of Arts and Letters, with labs, maker space, studios, and performance areas sharing circulation so the two disciplines actually run into each other. VMDO Architects leads the design, with Ballinger as design architect for the engineering side and Diamond Schmitt for the arts and performance spaces. W.M. Jordan Company is construction manager. Crews have finished site preparation and demolition, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing trades have started utility rough-ins, and main structural concrete placement is underway. Occupancy is slated for late 2030.

Why It Matters
Virginia is chasing a creative-technology economy, the kind of work that lives where design and engineering overlap, and universities have figured out that siloed buildings produce siloed graduates. Co-locating a robotics lab with a performance studio sounds like a brochure line, but the floor plan is doing real work: shared fabrication shops, cross-listed courses, and sightlines that make collaboration the path of least resistance. For ODU, the building is also a recruiting tool in a competitive market for STEM and arts students, and a $250 million signal about where the university wants to be in a decade.

Project Team & Details