Trends in Dining Hall Design

Campus dining is a crucial tool for recruiting students, especially those who plan to live at or close to campus. Instead of old-fashioned dining halls that resemble cafeterias with bland options like pizza and chicken tenders, dining spaces need to both connect with the students and offer in-demand food options. At Cooper Carry, our Higher Education experts create dining experiences students and administrators crave. Here is a look at the top design trends we are seeing in college dining halls.

Food Hall Format

At Auburn University’s Tony & Libba Rane Culinary Science Center, we created a dining space that reflected the hands-on training experience offered at the center. From culinary classrooms and a teaching restaurant to coffee-roasting facilities, to a boutique hotel and spa, the Rane Center is a unique gateway to campus.

We placed the food hall on the ground floor to allow access to the internal courtyard, which is in plain view and open to the community. Hey Day Market, named after Auburn’s cherished Hey Day celebration, offers a range of food options, including pizza, but also salads and poke bowls. Students can grab food on the go, or sit and linger comfortably with their friends. Visitors of the center also have the ability to try new student food concepts in the incubator space. The design resembles contemporary food halls as well as the landscape of downtown Auburn, with a mass timber structure, stained concrete floors, and steel-framed windows.

Hybrid Dining Halls

At Georgia Tech’s Campus Center, good food is just another way to enhance student well-being on campus. Cooper Carry collaborated with Workshop Architects and OLIN landscape architects to expand the existing student center. It had gone through limited changes over the past 50 years, and now needed to accommodate the expansion of the university itself as well as the diverse student population. To enhance the sense of community on campus, spaces for socializing were placed throughout the site. These included a wellness-themed pavilion, two theaters, flex spaces for student organizations, and even a gaming space with a bowling alley. A variety of dining spaces was integrated throughout the center, including to-go options and a standalone café. We also enhanced the signage and pedestrian paths for easy access to the center.

Distinct Food Concepts and Designs

Virginia Tech’s Hitt Hall is the new three-story, 101,000-square-foot (SF) facility that houses the provost’s classrooms, Myers-Lawson School of Construction, and a 30,000 SF Dining Hall. With our Branding and Experiential Graphic Design teams, we created seven unique dining concepts that seamlessly blend with the educational focus of the building. For example, at the sandwich deli Trax the name and design of the venue were inspired by the history of trains in the Blacksburg area. There is a train mural near the menu board, black and white tiles that mimic tracks on the flooring, and industrial lighting and wood elements. Even the staff are called “sandwich engineers.” At Amp, the coffee bar, we were inspired by the history of music technology. Design elements include references to music venues with exposed audio cables, neon signage, and custom lighting that emulates giant speakers overhead. The equalizer pattern was used in the tile behind the counter, and all of these elements can appeal to students and making them interested in learning more.

Interested in taking your dining game to the next level? Let Cooper Carry’s experts from across the firm help.?