This article was written by a student of ENGL 3330: Writing for the News Media, which is taught by Mike Pulley.
Daniel Hall, the building where most Clemson students take their general education classes in the heart of campus, will be renovated over the next three years.
Initially, the university will erect a new adjoining classroom building in the area between Strode Tower and Cooper Library’s E-15 parking lot. Once completed, this yet-to-be-named extension will serve as the general education hub while the old Daniel Hall gets fully renovated.
Daniel Hall’s central location and abundance of general education classes have made it a building relevant to everyone on campus.
“[Daniel Hall] has worked very hard,” said Gerald Vander Mey, Director of Clemson’s Planning & Design. “However, with it working so hard, there has not been very many opportunities to renovate the building.”
Construction will start in October for the neighboring academic building between Strode and the E-15 parking lot. Once the new building is finished, renovations, both interior, and exterior will begin for the old Daniel Hall around March 2022 and plan to be completed by 2023.
The three-story sister building will cover about 60,000 square-feet, have a modern look to it and offer approximately 20 new classrooms, along with an auditorium and brand new collaboration space for students.
“The nature of the building is meant to reflect the current teaching methodology, which is that [students] are not just in the classrooms, [they] are learning with other people,” Mey said.
With Daniel Hall offering the most credit hours among any other academic building on campus, the university feels that its students deserve a more welcoming base of study.
The improved Daniel Hall will strive to match the same look and feel as its future counterpart. The two buildings will be connected to each other with an interior walkway on their third floors.
The exterior of both buildings will also see changes. The space between the new building and Cooper Library will be transformed into an outdoor plaza area for students to study or relax between classes.
There is also a design being considered to extend the bridge from the intersection between Daniel Hall and Cooper Library towards the south part of campus so that the outdoor plaza would not interfere with crossing campus and remain in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Many students are excited to experience the ways that these renovations may impact the future of Clemson.
Garrett Thompson, a freshman mechanical engineering major, said that the renovations are promising in helping the building “keep up with the growing population of [Clemson’s] campus.
“I am especially excited for this considering I may be around long enough to see the end result,” Thompson said.
Alex Kho, a junior industrial engineering major, said that “these updates to [Daniel Hall] will help have the campus’s image mirror Clemson’s goal of always looking forward for constant improvement within itself.”
Both students and faculty are expecting big changes to Clemson within the next few years. With design development being nearly complete, and all stages going according to plan so far, students will be seeing new additions to Clemson by the end of 2021 and experiencing a new and improved Daniel Hall by 2023.
