Translating the Collegiate Campus Experience into a Corporate Workplace

by Mallory Budy | September 5th, 2016

  Real estate investment firm CA Ventures built its initial success on student living environments. The Chicago-based firm now works across a broad spectrum of property types, but when it made the decision to create a new headquarters space, it sought to channel the energy of the collegiate campuses that its expert staff champions. In leveraging higher ed. design elements, CA Ventures hoped to strengthen its talent recruitment and retention. A&D firm CannonDesign created a workplace centered on the “campus quad” experience – a space for student assembly functions, both formal and casual – for CA Ventures. “The spirit of what they create is the spirit of their new space,” says Robert Benson, design principal at CannonDesign. The design team tapped into extensive research on collegiate campus planning, and how that planning works to empower students. The research showed that college campuses are often planned around a “campus quad” concept, …