Wellesley College Student Center
With a master plan designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and dotted with structures designed by master architects, the Wellesley College Campus is an architectual mecca of sorts. The new student center had to include a large social hall, a cafeteria and dining room, the campus bookstore, student mailboxes, classrooms, administrative offices, a box office, and a bus stop. The site for the building featured a drastic change in grade and was located at the threshold of two areas of campus with their own figural identity: the Academic Quad and College Green (a vast natural amphitheater).
My response to the assignment was a center with "faces" on both the academic quad and on College Green; participating in both by holding their borders as well as in acting as a portal and transition between them. Formally, this was resolved with a "winged" roof: a band of it is at the same grade as the quad, which rises as it reaches back into that area and out into the Green. The roof is inhabitable, creating a third distinct public figure featuring a small bandstand, a sculpture park, and picnic tables. Beneath the roof it is possible to pass from the quad to the green without ever actually entering into the building.
