Le mie ricette per la real estate community
BIG’s design for Hopkins Student Center, or ‘The Village’, is an open, modern, and welcoming facility envisioned as a social engagement hub for all members of the Hopkins community.
BIG is thrilled to have been selected as the designer of the new Student Center for Johns Hopkins University; the result of a months-long international design competition led by a special advisory committee. Students and student affairs staff were included throughout the process, and more than 1,200 students, faculty, staff, and alumni responded to a June survey, inviting evaluation of the four design finalists. Feedback on BIG’s concept was overwhelmingly positive, with survey respondents embracing the building’s open feel, connections to surrounding exterior spaces, abundance of natural daylight, and integrated features that support the university’s sustainability goals. BIG has teamed up with Shepley Bulfinch as Architect of Record, along with Rockwell Group for interior design and Michael Van Valkenburg Associates for landscape design.
The approximately 150,000 square foot building will include spaces for relaxation and socialization, creative and performing arts spaces, student resources and support services, lounges, a digital media center, a performance space with seating for 200 people, and a dynamic dining hall that connects directly onto a new plaza along Charles Street. The facility will satisfy the long-acknowledged need for a true non-academic gathering spot on the university’s Homewood campus in Baltimore, Maryland.
Located just south of the iconic open space on the Johns Hopkins campus known as “The Beach” at the intersection of 33rd and Charles Streets, the facility will foster greater connectivity between the campus and the neighboring Charles Village community by creating a prominent, welcoming new entry point at 33rd Street. It will turn an area of the campus into a dynamic hub at the crossroads of student activity. As a natural gateway, the area will connect Charles Village and more than 3,500 Hopkins students who live in the neighborhood, to the heart of the Homewood campus.
The Village is conceived as a central living room surrounded by a collection of spaces tailored to the needs of the Hopkins community. The building negotiates the sloping grade of the site to allow direct entry from all four levels of the building, while maintaining a friendly human scale and providing several accessible routes across the site. Arriving on Charles Street, students and visitors are greeted by an open building façade with dining areas spilling out onto a sun-splashed plaza.
“Having taught at a number of world-renowned universities on the East Coast, it is an incredible honor to have been chosen to create the framework for the life of the Johns Hopkins students. We have attempted to imagine and design the Campus Center like a village condensed from a plethora of different spaces and pavilions for the greatest possible diversity of activities, interests and sub-cultures.” Bjarke Ingels, Founder & Creative Director, BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group.
The Village transforms the landscape around the building to create outdoor spaces for student activities and events. A central plaza can host pop-up exhibits or performances, as well as vendors and food trucks to enliven the North Charles Street corridor.
The new Hopkins Student Center is set to begin construction in Spring 2022 and to be completed by Fall 2024. This is BIG’s third academic building in the United States, following the Isenberg School of Management Business Innovation Hub for the University of Massachusetts Amherst and The Heights Building for Arlington Public Schools, both completed in 2019.
All images are from the design competition submission.
BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group is a Copenhagen, New York, London and Barcelona based group of architects, designers, urbanists, landscape professionals, interior and product designers, researchers and inventors. The office is currently involved in projects throughout Europe, America, Asia and the Middle East.
Source : BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group