Designed by Weiss/Manfredi architects, with a luminous exterior featuring glass panels, the new Diana Center at Barnard College is set for a grand opening on Wednesday, February 3, 2010. Poised to become a significant architectural presence on Broadway, in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of New York City, this 98,000-square-foot multi-use building includes a black box theatre as well as state-of-the-art classrooms, studio, library, administrative and gallery space for Barnard’s architecture and art history departments, as well as space for student services and activities, a public café, and a wood-paneled oval event space. The facade, composed of 1,154 clear and coloured integral glass panels, translates the brick and terra cotta of the surrounding neighbourhood into a luminous, energy-efficient exterior.

Barnard College is one of the prestigious ‘Seven Sisters’ women’s arts colleges of North Eastern America (which include Wellesley and Radcliffe among others). The Diana Center’s design, conceived by Weiss/Manfredi, reflects the college’s liberal curriculum with transparency, flow, and its overall design encouraging the Barnard community to interact, to exchange ideas, and to engage in rigorous and creative thinking.

The Diana Center encompasses the college’s architecture and painting studios, a 500-seat performance space, black box theatre, cafe, dining room, reading room, classrooms, and exhibition galleries. It will also be open to the public and has been designed to encourage this interaction. Located on Broadway, the Diana Center unites landscape and architecture, interior and exterior in a seven-storey structure. Carving a diagonal void through the building, ascending double-height glass atria establish views through program spaces and visually connect Lehman Lawn to the upper floors of the building and the green roof.The slipped atria and unfolded glazed staircase bring in natural light and eliminate visual boundaries between the College and the city while providing spaces for informal interaction to encourage collaboration and dialogue across disciplines.

Certified as LEED Silver, The Diana Center was named after the Roman goddess Diana and in honor of donor Diana Touliatou Vagelos ‘55, who, with her husband Roy, donated $15 million—the largest gift in Barnard’s history—for the project. The building is the capstone of the College’s multi-year Master Plan to increase spatial efficiency, improve infrastructures and add academic and administrative space.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 11th, 2010 at 2:32 pm and is filed under Architecture Design. Tags: administrative and gallery space, architectural presence, architecture and painting studios, Barnard College, Diana Center Design, energy efficient exterior, integral glass panels, landscape and architecture, LEED Silver Certified, uminous exterior featuring glass panels, Weiss/Manfredi architects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.