The New Orleans Culinary and Hospitality Institute

Occupying a historic former Art School complex, the project revitalized a downtown corner with student activity focused around a street-side café and 3rd floor “pop-up” restaurant space. This new culinary school includes 5 stories of active learning classrooms, collaboration spaces and seven different teaching kitchens. The project also includes a student commons and large event spaces with rooftop terraces that double as herb gardens. The project includes two protein kitchens, two pastry labs, a large event kitchen, pop-up restaurant kitchen and a street-side café kitchen as well as numerous beverage-serving locations and hospitality areas. All of these were carefully inserted into the historic structure to avoid conflicts with the existing architecture and respect historic conditions. BIM modeling was used extensively to coordinate the project, leading to a smooth construction process with minimal change-orders. The construction was delivered in a design–assist/design-build hybrid model with local builder, Woodward Design-Build.