Page 6 - spaces4learning, November/December 2019

REVITALIZING
HISTORIC
FACILITIES
Existing campus structures can be adapted to new life and new uses with a creative approach to restoring and modifying them from the ground up.
By Scott Berman
ADAPTIVE REUSE PROJECTS CAN ADD NEW FUNCTIONS, new life, and vitality not only to buildings, but also to key sections of campuses or even entire campuses. Potential choices can be as sur- prising as they are strategic.
Such outcomes do not come easily, however. Campus decision makers commonly face the issue of what to do with a building that has outlived its original or current use in the face of changing academic, enrollment, and strategic goals. Costs and the need for sensitivity to historic buildings and campus legacy also are bound up in the process, as is another key issue: sustainability, or how to create a quality institutional structure that will remain relevant for many decades to come, and to do so with a minimal expenditure of resources.
Two recent projects are among those that have pointed ways forward for their institutions: the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House in Philadelphia and Haverford College’s Vi- sual Culture Arts Media (VCAM) building in Haverford, PA.
In addition to being recent, these projects are bold. Each has leveraged and expanded upon, and within, venerable forms with aplomb in order to meet new demands.
Melding Old With New in Philadelphia
The University of Pennsylvania project, for a reported cost of $18.5 million, opened in 2016. It transformed a 168-year-old frater-
nity house, a 900-square-
foot structure at the
center of campus, into a
portion of an expanded,
17,400-square-foot, envi-
ronmentally sustainable
building occupied by Per-
ry World House, which as
the university indicates, is
a cross-disciplinary hub
for international relations and global engagement. The design firm, New York-based 1100 Architect, describes the building’s flexi- ble, open “range of spaces, including classrooms, meeting rooms, 14 offices, a 50-person conference room, and common areas, all de- signed to encourage interaction. At its core is the World Forum, a glass- enclosed atrium that will serve as a dynamic multi-use event space.” The refreshingly frank yet smooth melding of the original house with the new limestone-clad building creates a striking, distinctive exterior appearance.
David Piscuskas, founding principal, 1100 Architect, tells Spaces4Learning that “Perry World House is the outcome of a rig- orous analysis of program and space, and the result is a building that performs” and does so informed by the vision of the university.
The architectural-award-winning project speaks to what is
6 NOV/DEC 2019