Parmer Hall at Dominican University (Ill.).

WHEN YOU'RE GROWING AN institution, capital projects are usually a must-do. Dominican University, which had 1,800 students a decade ago, now has 3,500, and plans to reach 4,000, was in need of more academic space as part of its master plan to accommodate the growth. Parmer Hall fits the bill--and the campus landscape.

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* FUNCTION: 124,000 square feet of classrooms, laboratories, and faculty offices, serving all six Dominican schools, plus an academic enrichment center and a special needs office.

* CHALLENGES: With pitched slate roofs, gables, tall windows, and limestone exteriors, most of Dominicans facilities were built in the early 1920s in the Gothic architectural style. Students report that the collegiate look is one of the primary reasons they chose the university, notes Senior Vice President Amy McCormack. "We get a lot of points for curb appeal from our students, and I think our alumni are very proud of the look of the campus. We wouldn't want to fly in the face of something that has served us well."

The obvious move was to ensure that Parmer looked Gothic. Yet true Gothic materials don't come cheap. And administrators knew the building would need modern features. Could they combine old and new while keeping costs reasonable?

* SOLUTIONS: Campus officials "were quite willing to look at alternative ways" of achieving the Gothic look, says James Baird, design principal at architectural firm Holabird & Root and the principal in charge of project design for Parmer. "Ultimately this included using precast concrete rather than limestone and refining the details in order to realize a more cost-effective construction process." The exterior is variegated Renaissance stone (not a natural product but close to limestone in appearance), and a steeply pitched roof uses shingles rather than slate. An estimated $3 million more was spent on Gothic-like elements, but McCormack says it easily could have cost much more than that.

The interior needed to feel open and spacious so that people would want to congregate, says Baird. That meant designing more modern spaces, such as a two-story glass atrium (which, in a throwback to the past, includes a prominent wall constructed in part with limestone from the university's original science building) and a central staircase with metal finishes rather than wood banisters found in Gothic buildings.

Although modern labs require sophisticated air handling equipment that can affect the curb appeal of a building, the design team found a way to tuck the equipment away within the pitches of the roof gables. As people drive by or through campus, the new building certainly looks like it belongs at Dominican.

* COST: $38 million

* COMPLETED: August 2007

* PROJECT TEAM: Holabird & Root, architects; Pepper Construction, builder.