University of Miami Unveils Plans for On-Campus Residential Village

Florida’s University of Miami (UM) is embarking on the next phase of its multi-tiered plan to transform campus housing into a modern and eclectic mix of sustainable buildings to enhance the student living and academic experience.

Totaling 522,000 square feet, Centennial Village will showcase its lakefront location along Lake Osceola and feature more than 1,700 beds for first-year students, indoor and outdoor spaces for academic and extracurricular activities, a learning hub, meditation room, and apartments for faculty and staff. The village, which will feature four residential colleges and be built in two stages, will sit on the same site as the current Stanford and Hecht Residential Colleges and will reimagine the space fronting Lake Osceola.

University of Miami On-Campus Residential Village

The first stage of Centennial Village will replace Stanford Residential College and is planned to open in the fall of 2022. The second stage, which will replace Hecht Residential College, is slated to open in fall of 2024. In addition, Eaton Residential College will be renovated and incorporated into Centennial Village upon its completion in fall of 2025. The total project cost is estimated at $260 million.

Much like the Student Housing Village, Centennial Village will provide resident students with a living and learning environment that enriches their overall on-campus experience. Like other new construction on UM’s campus, Centennial Village will incorporate facility design and innovative building systems in order to achieve LEED Gold certification.

Design plans for Centennial Village have been submitted to the City of Coral Gables for review, and the university plans to break ground on the project in the summer of 2020.

Featured

  • Designing for Every Mind

    Learning environments have the power to shape not just what students know, but who they become. When a school is designed with genuine empathy—for the full range of ways students think, sense, and engage with the world—it becomes more than a building. It becomes a catalyst for growth, confidence, and belonging. That is the animating idea behind neurodiverse design, and it is one that is transforming how more architects and designers are thinking about school design.

  • Virginia Tech Tops Out New College of Engineering Building

    Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., recently celebrated the topping out of Mitchell Hall, which will soon stand as the largest College of Engineering building on campus, according to a news release. The university partnered with Skanska on the 285,500-square-foot facility, which has an expected completion date of winter 2028.

  • Q&A: How to Prevent Kitchen Grease Fires in Commercial Kitchens

    School cafeterias and university dining halls serve thousands of meals daily, relying on high-heat equipment like fryers, grills, and ovens. While these operations keep students fed, they also generate significant grease-laden vapors. Without proper controls, this grease becomes a silent fire threat. As a certified exhaust cleaning specialist and business coach who has helped hundreds of institutional facilities achieve NFPA 96 compliance, I emphasize that proactive grease management isn’t optional; it’s a core fire/life safety practice.

  • Tomball ISD Opens New Tomball West High School

    Tomball Independent School District in Tomball, Texas, recently celebrated the official opening of Tomball West High School, the district's third comprehensive high school, with a community ribbon-cutting ceremony, according to a district news release.