McMillan Pazdan Smith expands education capabilities with merger.

Eleven stories of thousands of windowless bedrooms, complete with TV-monitors designed to emulate natural light all designed by a 97-year-old billionaire without any architectural experience.

If it sounds like a prison from 2080, think again. It's just one of the ways University of California Santa Barbara is "minimizing costs by maximizing the number of beds," according to the school, during a time when many university budgets are still reeling from pandemic-related pressures.

Munger Hall, named after its designer, Berkshire Hathaway investor Charlie Munger, could epitomize the future for educational architecture, but McMillan Pazdan Smith and its new associates from ed-focused Watson Tate Savory have other ideas: blueprints with lots of natural sunlight with student's health in mind.

"Natural light benefits people in a variety of ways," Ron Smith, founding principal of McMillan Pazdan Smith and the firm's education expert, told GSA Business Report. "It helps you learn better. It helps with absenteeism."

LEED and Green Globe certification still prevail on college campus buildings, according to Smith, but Well-certified structures are the new gold standard.

"Which is how a building can help a student or faculty member perform better," he said, adding that Well-certified buildings tend to be defined by "a great heating and air conditioning system, has lots of natural light, has lots of things that help them physically, mentally and emotionally perform better."

The evolving higher education space and common goals prompted an October merger of the two firms under the banner of McMillan Pazdan Smith at its Columbia and Charlotte offices.

"We have the ability to have researchers on staff, so we have the ability in real time to continue to stay current with trends, which is a great benefit to higher education clients," said Tom Savory, principal of Watson Tate Savory and Clemson University adjunct professor. "Higher education is extremely competitive. All of the national firms are always in the room competing for any significant higher education projects. So this merger really brings the same level of expertise and the same human resources and breadth of talent to bear that national firms bring when they come to the higher education table."

In the past, McMillan Pazdan Smith's client base has focused in on independent colleges and universities, according to Smith, with K-12 to higher education work making up 35% of the firm's projects.

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