Page 26 - College Planning & Management, September 2017

THE GATHERING SPOT
New York State of Mind
A recent visit to Albany’s Uptown Campus revealed significant changes to the Campus Center, including a 22,000-square-foot east addition, housing a high-ceiling dining hall, which opened in 2016. Currently underway: a 55,000-square-foot west expansion that will house auditorium, rehearsal, resource and student spaces. The spaces are part of a larger, $60 million renovation and expansion project that architect William Rawn Associates says “re-establishes the prominence” of the center of campus characterized by its 1960s Modernist design by Edward Durell Stone.
A GROWING CONCERN. While the University at Albany SUNY Campus Center was designed for a university of 10,000 students, enrollment has grown to more than 17,000 under- graduates and graduate students. Today, the expanded Campus Center remains the hub of student activity, providing many more dining options and nearly 9,000 meals per day.
The exteriors of the new additions clearly reference the enormous original, extending Stone’s building without trying
to replicate his ideas from decades ago. The façades of each
sleek new addition have narrow vertical forms on masonry and window systems, an array that abstractly references the original building’s own exterior glass and particularly its long, multiple rows of slender columns that support a great overhanging roof. The masonry matches the light-hued tone of the original and is divided by an uninterrupted horizontal, which meets the height of the original building’s podium. The overall impression: an ex- panded campus center with an exterior that, with new functions and amenities, refreshes the campus hub.
Updating a Bluegrass Tradition
The exterior systems of another extensive project use campus tradition as a point of leverage to express future goals: the $200 mil- lion, 365,000-square-foot renovation and addition project underway at the University of Kentucky Student Center in Lexington. Slated for completion in January 2018, the project has an exterior “intention- ally designed to represent both the rich legacy of the university and its aspirational vision of the future,” says Perkins+Wills’ Stebar.
He says the architects sought an exterior that “could span the design spectrum from ‘tradition to trend’; and then, to simulta- neously create a bright, daylight-filled, sustainable building that would welcome today’s and tomorrow’s students — all while effort- lessly blending with the campus’ architectural context.”
The façade does so through balance, between masonry that combines limestone and new and legacy brick kept from two old campus buildings, including some brick façade from the uni- versity’s original 79-year-old student union. These appear with contemporary forms “clad in glass curtain wall and zinc panels,” Stebar explains.
This exterior has considerable drama: the glass curtain wall appears in great expanses, and at one focal point, panels cover the drum-like form of an auditorium space — another great drum appears elsewhere, seemingly submerged into the building behind curtain glass — positioned behind a curving masonry wall that culminates in enormous UK letters. Renderings envision clusters of steel outdoor furniture under umbrellas, positioned at key thoroughfare and gathering points.
THREE IDEAS ABOUT THE EXTERIORS OF CAMPUS CENTERS:
• Step outside the box to express the legacy and the future of an institution.
• “Do not automatically dismiss new systems only because they have not been previously used on their campus,” says Perkins+Wills’ Stebar.
• Think about lighting, furnishings and paving that will animate the exterior of a center.
26 COLLEGE PLANNING & MANAGEMENT / SEPTEMBER 2017
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RENDERINGS © PERKINS+WILL
PHOTO © SCOTT BERMAN