Expanding the UF College of Veterinary Medicine

UF expands facilities to accommodate Growth

The University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine has expanded its facilities to better train its veterinary students to meet professional demands and to accommodate the rapid growth of the hospital’s emergency and critical care service.

This project provides more spacious accommodations for primary care and dentistry services, as well as additional offices for administrative personnel. The expansion makes room for growing emergency and critical care needs for the College. The new building includes 27 new offices, a call center, and an accounting space.

James W. Norman Hall has been known for decades as the nexus of the University of Florida's College of Education. It was designed and built in 1934 as a K-12 school, named for civic leader P.K. Yonge. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, the building held the potential to be a gem of historic architecture on UF's campus. 

But building modifications over time buried distinctive architectural elements and the accumulation of critical repairs and maintenance seriously strained college resources. By the turn of the 21st century, Norman Hall no longer met the myriad needs of the students, faculty, and administrative staff who are learning, teaching and working throughout the building. 

The Past Informs Present-Day Design

Our design team was charged with rehabilitating historic Norman Hall to support 21st-century learning technologies while preserving the Hall's "collegiate Gothic" character. To give the facility a new life, we took cues from photographs of building interiors from the 1950s. We discovered that the main West entrance had been intended as a gathering place, but offices and storage rooms had encroached upon space and obstructed traffic flow. We began by prioritizing changes that would alter or remove interior structures to let in natural light, facilitate movement and create gathering spaces.