Sheila C. Johnson Design Center in New York, United States

July 21, 2010 Category: Education, Public Buildings

Designed by LYN RICE ARCHITECTS, located in New York, United States, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center (SCJDC) is addresses the three key elements of the project brief; to create an active institutional identity that reflects Parsons’ commitment to the new, to recognise the School’s urban context, and to highlight the innovative work being produced at the School. The Center establishes a new campus nexus and performs as an expansive urban threshold that draws together the School’s creative programs and their vibrant Greenwich Village context.

New state-of-the-art galleries, archives, auditorium, orientation centre, student critique zone and seminar spaces bring to Parsons the capability of hosting world-class exhibitions, lectures, events and seminars.

The skylit urban quad unclogs the geographic centre of the complex, unifies circulation, and provides a generous, day-lit academic / social surface that fosters creative interaction between students and faculty from the School’s diverse design disciplines for the first time.

With a series of new large-panel, deep-set windows, the complex’s perimeter is transformed from being a barrier between inside and outside, into a double-sided window lounge that draws students and faculty together to occupy both sides of the façade, and which doubles as a perimeter exhibition zone for the display of student work.

In the SCJDC, identity is not so much imposed as it is revealed and staged. The Center is designed to set up a range of opportunities for the students to create an identity for the Center through their own work. The complex’s three elevator / stair cores were co-opted as pedagogical billboards for exhibiting student work at an urban scale.

Sheila C. Johnson Design Center Design by LYN RICE ARCHITECTS