Driving past the harvested fields and pastures of eastern Nebraska on a cloudy late-autumn day, the big takeaway (at least for this urban native) was: land is abundant here. “Out in these rural stretches, there is room to sprawl,” says Dennis Coudriet, a principal at BVH Architecture. Even in the metro areas of Lincoln and Omaha (each home to one of the firm’s two studios), “you rarely find a school that’s not one level,” notes coprincipal Mark Bacon.