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Main elevation (SW) along Houston Street. Located at the southern edge of the NYU campus, the John A. Paulson Center serves as a new gateway, creating new opportunities for the University to engage with its community and City.
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Overall building from NW. The Paulson Center’s transparent façade takes advantage of the building’s 360-degree relationship with the neighborhood. A large, accessible terrace on the north end of the building is open to the entire NYU community.
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The building is organized into “neighborhoods” connected to an open and expansive Commons area that serves as crossroads and destination – the heart of the building.
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The 250-seat Iris Cantor Proscenium Theatre is NYU’s first professional-level proscenium theatre for performing arts teaching and student productions. Its Broadway-sized stage and fly tower can be transformed into a music concert hall perfectly sized and tuned to accommodate a wide variety of performances.
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The project’s interior prioritizes equitable circulation by integrating stairs and elevators at every level, offering users of all abilities equal access and experiences. By shifting circulation to the perimeter, the design maximizes natural light, offers 360-degree views, and enhances sustainability through reduced energy use and bird-safe glass treatments.
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Daylit perimeter circulation with lounges and casual seating areas are found throughout the building, providing students with a variety of social and academic gathering places.
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58 general-purpose classrooms are designed for maximum flexibility and future change.
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New student housing at the Paulson Center greatly enhances NYU’s residential portfolio, adding suites in a mix of single, double, and triple bedrooms to house a total of 407 first-year students and 18 residents advisors. The shape and placement of façade wedges optimize natural light and view while reducing solar gain and glare. As an added benefit, they create window seats in the student housing towers.
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The new athletic and recreation facility is a multi-dimensional destination for varsity athletes, general recreation users, and students seeking wellness, and is open to local community residents.
Centered around Manhattan’s Washington Square Park, NYU’s various programs are dispersed across purpose-built and leased buildings, many functioning with far less space than the University's peer institutions. We designed a building on the campus's southern edge that accommodates NYU's academic needs and offers new ways for the University to engage with its community.
Designed to optimize interactions between diverse student groups and academic disciplines, the John A. Paulson Center includes classrooms, informal study spaces, performing arts theaters, rehearsal and practice rooms, varsity and recreational sports facilities, as well as faculty and first-year student housing. These programs are organized into “neighborhoods” connected to an expansive commons that provides collaborative study, meeting, and dining places.
The Center's design takes advantage of its 360-degree relationship with the neighborhood by placing circulation along its transparent perimeter and programmatic spaces in the interior of the building. This reversal of conventional building organization provides users with one-of-a-kind city views while also giving outside observers a sense of the building's activity. This distinct layout, along with the building's prominent stairways, creates a sense of connection by encouraging the casual encounters and intellectual exchanges that are at the center of the NYU experience. Outside, the design continues to develop connections through a new pedestrian “greenway” that reconnects the NYC street grid along the building's west side.
In addition to using cleaner energy, the building was designed to minimize its carbon footprint. The transparent facade and its glare- and heat gain reducing design lowers energy use by allowing the building to rely primarily on natural light during the day. Similarly, the Center's series of green roofs and terraces naturally cool the building and its surrounding landscape while also helping to manage rainwater runoff. Together, the Paulson Center’s passive and active sustainability strategies reduce overall site energy use by 13%.
John A. Paulson Center at NYU
Category
Architecture
Description
CATEGORY AWARDED*
*If different from category of submission.
FIRM CREDIT(S)
Submitting Architecture Firm
Davis Brody Bond, A Page Company
Additional Architecture Firm Credits (if named)
CHAPTER
AIA New York State
PROJECT LOCATION
New York, New York
PRIMARY USE/TYPE
Education - College/University (campus-level)
IMAGE CREDITS
© James Ewing/JBSA
Winner Status
- Merit Award
- Finalist