Architect: Davis Brody Bond, KieranTimberlake
Location: New York, New York
Completion Date: January 2023
A brand new constructing at New York College (NYU) located on the southern fringe of the city campus responds to the varsity’s id and the character and vitality of the neighborhood. The closely programmed John A. Paulson Middle homes scholar dormitories, college flats, educational areas, a number of efficiency and rehearsal venues, and a below-grade gymnasium geared up for NCAA play. It was a collaborative effort between Davis Brody Bond and KieranTimberlake, who acted as a singular design crew all through its design and building.
The Paulson Middle occupies a whole metropolis block between Houston, Mercer, and Bleecker streets. It’s the results of an eight-year-long design and building course of that in 2016 concerned the demolition of the Coles Fitness center, beforehand positioned on the positioning. The 735,000-square-foot constructing’s massing and facade design had been pushed by the three major applications—educational, scholar residential, and college residential.
“The dimensions, depth, layering, and particulars of the facades are tuned to program kind, the encircling context, orientation, and photo voltaic publicity, providing a dynamic play of texture and coloration that modifications over the course of the day, the seasons, and as one strikes round and thru the constructing,” KieranTimberlake and Davis Brody Bond advised AN.
The constructing’s boxy form is fashioned by an educational podium, taller residential towers, and rectangular volumes. These parts are scaled to the neighborhood context: The tutorial quantity fronting Mercer and Houston responds to the constructing top in that neighborhood, whereas the school and scholar buildings are designed consistent with the close by superblock housing of Washington Sq. Village and I. M. Pei’s Silver Towers.
To permit for extra nook items within the residential towers, the architects offset the constructions in each plan and part, making a extra slender silhouette whereas additionally exposing soffits under the towers. As described by the design crew, these soffits act as “a fifth floor.” The imagery put in on their surfaces pulls from panorama pictures taken in close by Washington Sq. Park.
A customized curtain wall that includes a frit sample of “staggered” strains and projected “wedge” panels entrance practically all faces of the constructing. Each the glass frit design and wedges had been conceived with power effectivity in thoughts. KieranTimberlake and Davis Brody Bond designed the frit sample in shut collaboration with the American Fowl Conservancy, and it pertains to the constructing graphics designed by Pentagram. The density of the strains forming the sample varies relying on location, with 50 % density reached on areas of the constructing with excessive photo voltaic publicity.
Just like the frit, the “wedges” serve a objective past aesthetics. To cut back photo voltaic acquire the projections are, once more, grouped collectively on elements of the constructing with vital daylight publicity. The triangular protrusions additionally reply to this system; in educational areas of the constructing they’re carefully packed for passive shading and in addition create distinctive, occupiable nook areas. All the bedrooms and lounge areas throughout the scholar towers have a wedge unit with a window seat and operable window. On the school tower the protrusion is “inverted” and conceived as “sloped spandrel panel,” the design crew defined.
“All three wedge varieties combine opacity into the facade with a dynamic darkish purple (basalt) coloration, altering from a darkish muted coloration to a wealthy deep purple within the full solar,” they continued. (The purple hue is a reference to NYU’s college coloration: violet.)
Earlier than deciding on the required glass, KieranTimberlake and David Brody Bond examined the efficiency of a number of glass supplies with bodily fashions and full-scale curtain wall mockups, along with operating mannequin simulations, power modeling, and thermal evaluation. The crew additionally appeared on the embodied carbon and carried out a lifecycle evaluation utilizing Kieran Timberlake’s Tally BIM built-in life cycle evaluation software program.
On every flooring, circulation is positioned in opposition to the glazed perimeter. Inside areas are outfitted with domestically sourced and FSC-certified American ash in various iterations. Within the north and south lobbies the ash is whitewashed, whereas within the Sky Foyer and residential lounge areas the wooden seems within the type of wall slates. The fabric can be used within the theater and performing arts areas.
Designing the theater and performing arts areas was a significant element of the mission. A number of venues and instructing areas for NYU’s Tisch College of the Arts and Steinhardt College of Music are housed throughout the Paulson Middle. Amongst these are the Iris Cantor Proscenium Theatre, the primary, professional-level proscenium theater at NYU; the African Grove Theatre, an homage to the nation’s first Black theater based on the identical metropolis block in 1821; and the Orchestra Ensemble Rehearsal Room.
Most theater and rehearsal areas had been deliberately positioned towards the core, “making a buffer that diminished the necessity for extraordinary acoustical measures within the curtain wall design,” the architects defined.
The Orchestra Ensemble Rehearsal room faces the road and because of this contains a double-skin, faceted envelope to mitigate exterior noise and improve inside acoustics. Vibration isolation pads had been put in within the basis, and structural beams and columns stunt sounds and vibrations from the underground subway line.
Together with the acoustic concerns, different mission challenges had been provide chain disruptions from the pandemic and rising building prices. The architects credit score coordination among the many whole design crew for the success of the mission.
“The mixed-use constructing program and the dimensions of enormous performing arts, social, and athletics venues referred to as for structural heroics, deep coordination and complexity,” they stated.
