See inside the newly renovated Gray Design Building at the University of Kentucky

A building more than a century old on the University of Kentucky’s campus has been given new life, with a focus on collaboration between students in the College of Design.

Renovations on the Gray Design Building, originally known as the Reynolds Building, was completed during the spring semester after a $5.25 million donation from Gray Inc., a construction and engineering company owned by the Gray family in Lexington.

Renovations were completed earlier this year, with students and faculty moving into the building over the past several months. The fall semester, which begins on August 26, will be the first full semester the renovated building is occupied and in use.

Home to the programs within the College of Design, this building marks the first time all the programs have shared one building. Joe Brewer, director of technology and facilities for the College of Design, said that will allow people from different programs — from freshmen to master’s students to professors — to interact in one space.

“We know from lots and lots of research that the best way to make innovation happen is to put a bunch of people who are smart and curious next to each other, and the more diverse those people are — not just ethnically diverse, but sociologically diverse, diverse interests and backgrounds — the more innovation happens,” Brewer said.

The building has pieces of its history throughout, with original hardwood flooring and columns. With the warehouse’s high ceilings, the building is bright and open, with desks and work spaces for students.

Students in the College of Design will have assigned desks in the building, with 550 workstations currently available, Brewer said. Similar to an open office concept, the desks are arranged in large open rooms, meaning students from throughout the college can easily collaborate.

College of Design Dean Ned Crankshaw said there’s an excitement among students and faculty about having collaboration space and all working in one location.

“We’ve always had a really great faculty here, and great programs, but what the new building brings is the ability, really, to see what all the different design programs and students are working on, and to have the ability to collaborate with other students,” he said.

All design programs in one building

The Gray Design Building is now home to the architecture, historic preservation, interior design and product design programs, as well as landscape architecture from the Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture Food and Environment.

Students from each program will have access to fabrication spaces in the building, including a woodshop, a 3D printers and a 3D knitting machine. Fabrication spaces were designed close to student work areas, for “an easy interaction between those two things,” Crankshaw said. There are also large spaces, and several outdoor spaces, where students will be able to build full-scale projects with ease.

“Our fabrication isn’t just about making little models and things,” he said. “It’s from the smallest scale, to really large, full-scale projects.”

Technology in the classrooms allows students to easily be able to share their digital work for feedback, or share their work from multiple locations. Brewer said to his knowledge, UK is one of the first design schools to use that type of technology, called T1V.

The building also serves as a link between UK and downtown Lexington. Located directly off Broadway, the building has views of downtown from the classrooms.

In part, that side of campus became disconnected from downtown when Broadway was changed in the mid-1970s, Brewer said. The street was lowered to help with traffic near the railroad crossing, taking away direct access to campus from Broadway.

History of Gray Design Building

Last year, at the time of the donation, UK President Eli Capilouto called the building “historic, but terribly stressed.”

Built in 1917 as a tobacco warehouse, it was acquired by UK to use as a classroom building in the 1960s. It housed the art department for several years, but was vacated more than a decade ago and used as a surplus storage location, as the building was in need of major renovations.

Construction was briefly halted last year when human bones were found at the construction site. The location was a city cemetery in the 1800s, Fayette County Coroner Gary Ginn told the Herald-Leader. Buildings were built on top of the cemetery over time, and construction last year led to the discovery of bones.

In accordance with state law, UK contacted the coroner’s office, who conducted an investigation before construction was allowed to resume.