Barnard College has unveiled designs for a new library and academic center by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM).
The Cheryl and Philip Milstein Teaching and Learning Center at Barnard’s Morningside Heights campus will feature the “flexible learning spaces” that are pretty much de rigueur for any new academic building. The 128,000-square-foot, 11-story structure will be almost double the size of Lehman Hall, the building it is replacing.
Barnard chose SOM to design The Milstein Center back in 2014, though the college waited until last week to reveal all the final renderings.
SOM has envisioned a building with a five-story base and a comparatively narrow six-story top, a move that allows sunlight to flood the adjacent main lawn. In growing its footprint by 50 percent, The Milstein Center library program will almost double Lehman’s seating while providing access to the outdoors on multiple terraces. Though there will be plenty of individual study spaces for students who prefer to hit the books in relative isolation, the library, in keeping with the times, will de-emphasize books in favor of multimedia labs and group study spaces.
The core programming, which includes new offices and conference space, will be framed by a ground floor digital commons (Barnard is one of the only liberal arts colleges with a technology requirement) and a computational science center for teaching and research.
The video below gives a snazzy introduction to The Milstein Center, which is slated to open in August 2018:
