Inside expands out. Outside flows in. The building invites visitors and staff, with the campus landscape a composed welcoming room - an outdoor reception room framed and defined by the low brick garden walls - set between two larger campus structures bordering a pastoral campus green.
Site Hyphen
The site is a former parking lot located at the center of a small campus between the Library and Student Center. Both of these adjoining buildings are very large; each is more than ten times the size of the new structure. All three buildings connect to a major new walk linking this area of campus with the academic quadrangle. The view west across this walk is to the central campus green and lake beyond.
Wall Walk
The new structure forms above and behind a brick garden wall. This wall reinforces the campus walk and establishes a scale compatible with the much larger adjoining buildings. Openings are deeply recessed with concealed frames reinforcing the garden wall ideal. The stucco second floor and portions of the first floor on the east side emerge behind and above this wall, substantiating the dialogue between site strategy (single-story brick garden wall) and program accommodation (stucco enclosed volumes).
Inside Out/Outside In
The inside-out connections between brick wall and stucco volume converge at the double-height "welcoming room". The large bifurcated opening to the campus green - half glazed and interior, half open frame and exterior - extends inside out and outside in.
Program Into Volume
The program is an administrative office block to the south on both floors. As this block emerges against the double-volume main stair and welcoming room, it overlaps the open volume. The second floor conference rooms and offices extend into the double volume welcoming room, forming a single-height reception area below and allowing views across the welcoming room and out to the campus from above. The spatial sequence from enclosed office block to double volume welcoming room is culminated with the garden as implied room. Space transposes from solid (office program) to void (garden as extension of welcoming room), all behind the unifying presence of the brick site wall.
© 1997– KieranTimberlake
[ 420 N 20 Street, Philadelphia PA 19130.3828 | V 215 922 6600 F 215 922 4680 ]
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