Project Details

The ACCESS program at the Texas School for the Deaf provides valuable educational opportunities and resources for the school’s 18-to-22-year-old students as they transition from campus life to the wider world. Reflecting this need, the new ACCESS Learning Hub creates a vibrant new campus neighborhood to support a holistic, safe, and communal environment for the school’s transitional students.
The ACCESS Learning Hub comprises a new 3-story 37,000 SF, 16-unit dormitory building, a 12,000 SF renovation and addition for the ACCESS classroom spaces, and amenities and support spaces throughout for TSD’s post-secondary education focused on community, employment, and social skills. Outdoor areas of the project knit the various parts of the Learning Hub into a vibrant new campus neighborhood.
The project, designed collaboratively with deaf stakeholders and knowledge experts to ensure that the physical environment is attuned to unique aspects of deaf experience, has been guided at all stages of development by DeafSpace, a set of principles and guidelines created by and for the deaf community as a trailblazing effort to design more inclusive spaces. Gathering and cooking together are a central theme not only for the ACCESS program but for the larger deaf community. The ACCESS Learning Hub takes this theme of togetherness as a focal point for the design of communal kitchens as the main activity hubs for the communal spaces of the dormitory building, the individual dormitory units, and the main culinary space anchoring the classroom renovation.