Cannon Designs Kirksville Dental School
Date Posted: April 3, 2014
Posted In: Projects,
CannonDesign has completed its work for A. T. Still University in Kirksville is complete, with the opening of the Interprofessional Education and School of Oral Health Building to house the Missouri School of Dental and Oral Health. Founded in 1892, A.T. Still University (ATSU) was the first school of osteopathic medicine and is a leader in educating healthcare practitioners focused on multidisciplinary, whole-person care.
The CannonDesign team included George Nikolajevich, Design Principal; James Walsh, Project Principal/Project Manager; Rod Smith, Erik Mease, Casey Bohnert, Michael Dieckhaus, Ted Zemper, Jocelyn Wildman, Timothy Riedle, Ruofei Sun, Timothy Cooke, Lynn Grossman, Punit Jain and Joe Scott.
To develop the facility’s program, the team conducted faculty interviews, and toured ATSU’s Arizona School of Dental and Oral Health, and dental schools at Boston University, Harvard University, and Tufts University, analyzing affinities between the dental program and core competencies of other degrees at the schools.
The $17 million project includes a new 62,200 sf building with a traditional dental simulation laboratory, a wet laboratory, imaging, and support spaces, as well as human patient simulation labs to reinforce holistic, multidisciplinary, patient-centered care. These labs and briefing rooms are used extensively for interprofessional education among the school’s various degree programs. Another major feature is a large, dividable multimedia classroom designed to facilitate team-based multidisciplinary education, with media infrastructure that enables instructors and individual teams to share and critique project solutions with the entire class.
The building is clad primarily in brick, with a curved glass façade that showcases the dental simulation laboratory, optimizes views for faculty offices, and draws daylight into the building’s core. A cantilevered classroom wing provides the lower floor with shade and significantly reduces excavation and foundation costs. Circulation takes the form of student commons spaces rather than corridors to facilitate informal interaction and highlight the bold yet functional forms of key program elements. The building’s enclosure and systems are designed to allow future expansion of dental simulation and accommodation of other programs in first-floor shelled space.
CannonDesign’s Technology Design Group designed the technology systems for the new building, including structured telecommunications cabling for voice, data, and video; exterior systems connecting the building with the campus data center; a new access control system; and expansion of the campus video surveillance system to the new building to monitor new interactive educational demonstration and simulation equipment. Selected based on input from user groups, the audiovisual systems are the most dynamic on the campus.