The new 140,000 sf facility brings together the Batten College of Engineering and Technology and the College of Arts and Letters in one integrated environment. Advancing a new model for interdisciplinary learning and discovery, the building creates an integrated destination for research, making, performance, creativity, and public engagement, enriching academic life across both colleges.

At the heart of the building is an 800-seat Convening Hall that provides a highly adaptable performance and presentation space with modes that support academic events, lectures, conferences, dance, film, music, theater, and interdisciplinary productions. Serving both the University and the broader community, the hall functions as an academic resource and cultural destination. Its presence reinforces the broader design idea that performance, research, engineering, and creative practice can inform and animate one another when they share space.

A three-storey central lobby and commons anchors the building as a shared civic and academic heart. Advanced laboratories, research environments, studios, makerspaces, galleries, and collaborative commons are organized around it creating direct connections between disciplines. These adjacencies make collaboration and exchange part of daily academic life, establishing an environment where engineering, technology, design, and the arts intersect, catalyzing inquiry and innovation across disciplines.

Conceived as both a campus crossroads and a gateway, the building strengthens connections across ODU and establishes a more welcoming threshold between the University and the surrounding community. Its transparent, open architectural expression places research, making, rehearsal, and performance in view, making the interdisciplinary activities and life of the building visible and accessible, and an integral part of everyday campus experience.

Approved by the University’s Board of Visitors and advancing through the Commonwealth of Virginia’s capital funding process, the Engineering and Arts Building has received a $223 million investment, making it one of the most significant capital projects in ODU’s history.