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Duke University Hudson Hall — Renewing "Old Red" for today's engineering students

Durham, NC
In Progress, 2029
190,000 square feet
Type: Academic / Reuse
Theme: Transforming Old Buildings

TenBerke and Ballinger are collaborating on the renewal of Duke University’s Hudson Hall for Pratt School of Engineering. The 190,000-square-foot renovation and expansion will sensitively restore the 1948 building’s historic brick exterior (fondly known as ‘Old Red’) and expand teaching spaces and social spaces for a closer-knit community. Designed during Duke’s postwar university growth, Hudson Hall reflected the period’s pedagogy. This renovation will update the well-used building for interactive teaching and interdisciplinary research while carrying its legacy into the future of engineering education.

Following a feasibility study, which examined options ranging from limited restoration to complete replacement, we arrived at a solution that reduces embodied carbon and maximizes spaces designed to grow with the school. The design repurposes and restores the historic structure, while removing outmoded elements and additions to open up new possibilities. As an amalgam of original and new architecture, the renewed Hudson Hall maintains its iconic brick façade on Harrington Quad while enlivening LSRC Quad with welcoming covered outdoor spaces and visible workshops and classrooms. Within the building, the design opens up two existing central courtyard spaces and unifies them under a broad skylight. This layered and intimate atrium forms the heart of the project, embraced on three sides by the brick of the original building wings. Throughout, a greater variety of classrooms, class labs, workshop, research, and event spaces, with broader footprints and fewer columns, enhance future adaptability.

Hudson Hall will be a center of gravity for interdisciplinary research, sustaining the vibrant heart of Duke’s engineering program. As one of the first retrofit projects of the university’s comprehensive science and research facilities renewal plan, it sensitively models a framework of practice for future building improvements on campus.

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Hudson Hall was originally built in 1948, and designed by Julian Abele in the Office of Horace Trumbauer.

Its red brick construction marked postwar university growth and an economy of material expression, and became a beloved building on campus.

Additions built over decades were poorly suited to contemporary teaching and research spaces.

The design juxtaposes Hudson’s finest parts with highly visible new spaces in a skylit court, supporting Pratt’s resilient future.

We imagined light pouring into a new heart at Hudson Hall — where engineering labs, classrooms, and research spaces converge in a hive of discovery, connection, and interdisciplinary possibility.

Ameet Hiremath, Senior Principal

Key People

Ameet Hiremath
Project Lead

Kurt Nieminen
Project Architect

Toby Stewart

Josie Baldner

Collaborators

TenBerke
Collaborating Architect

Ballinger
Collaborating and Executive Architect, MEP/FP Engineer, Structural Engineer

RFD
Lab Planning

McAdams
Civil Engineer

Andropogon
Landscape Architect

RWDI
Enclosure, Vibration, Exhaust Dispersion

Carolina Specialty Engineering
Life Safety, Code

Dharam Consulting
Cost Estimating

Atelier Ten
Sustainability

Related Work

Brown University Danoff Laboratories
Yale University Upper Science Hill Development
Rockefeller Arts Center, SUNY Fredonia