Transforming Community Spaces

Residence Halls

We are fully renovating all of our residence halls, including student rooms, bathrooms, and lounges, in phases. These are the first comprehensive renovations to student living spaces since the opening of NCSSM-Durham in 1980. Hill was renovated first, with Reynolds completed in time for the 2026-27 academic year, and Royall scheduled to begin in 2027. Beall and Bryan residence halls will follow, then finally Hunt.

All of our residence halls are becoming much nicer places for residential life through this project. Renovations bring all new flooring, fresh paint, all new furniture, and completely renovated bathrooms with new fixtures and tile. Below, you can see our architects’ renderings of a completed room and bathroom.

Logistical changes

Students assigned to each residence hall undergoing renovations live in temporary modular residence halls set up near Hunt called Unicorn Village. Groups of students live in UniVille temporarily in turn as each hall's renovations are completed.

Status

Royall students are living in UniVille for the entire 2026-27 academic year to avoid the need for a mid-year move
Hill residence hall renovations were completed in February 2025, and Reynolds renovations in August 2026
The construction of UniVille was completed in time for Fall Semester 2024

Anticipated finish date

2030

Unicorn Village: Temporary residence hall

To avoid reducing NCSSM-Durham enrollment during residence hall renovations, we are renovating residence halls a few at a time while providing temporary housing on campus to host the residents of the spaces under renovation. UniVille is located between the baseball and soccer fields and is composed of two long student housing units connected to each other and to the rest of campus by new sidewalks. It includes all the typical amenities of campus residence halls, including lounge spaces, Community Coordinator apartments, and rooms comparable in size and furnishings to our typical student rooms.

Modular site location

Modular Residence Hall layout

This is an adventure in all senses of the word, but hall communities experience it together as a community. During all these transitions, residence hall community groups remain intact, as you can see from the diagram above – and we even seek to keep room neighbors close following moves to foster community.

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