Talking Stick - May/June 2008 - 80

There Goes the Neighborhood MGA Partners Making the House a Home The mission of the college housing program is to educate the whole person – guided to the joys of a life of the mind by a dedicated faculty and nurtured in citizenship by an institution. MGA Partners proposed a residence hall that emulates an urban walk-up style apartment where the residential units have shared public space formed by the volumes of the individual buildings. Further, as a walkup style unit maintains a central stair core for vertical circulation to the residential units, the college house dwelling pulls this circulation core to the exterior of the building so that the life of the pavilions is visible to the larger community. This residential pavilion with center core and suites at the perimeter offers more ﬂexibility to reconﬁgure layouts as housing trends change over time, allowing the building to be reused rather than rebuilt. At the same time, the individualized entry program with walk-up circulation minimizes the use of elevators and reduces energy usage. Each residential unit is composed of three or four private rooms, a communal living space with corner views, and a shared bathroom. The four residential units per ﬂoor are clustered to create a pavilion unit ﬂoor. Meanwhile, two ﬂoors are grouped together to create a resident assistant cluster of four ﬂoors joined to create a walk-up style residential pavilion which can then be grouped to create the desired number of students for a residential college house. The chosen site represents a powerful opportunity for a college or university to continue its commitment to a rich integration of the campus with the surrounding city. This new place will extend the strong character of the campus as a contiguous connected element and will become a unique environment speciﬁc to the buildings and artwork that deﬁne it. There are many portals, but few gateways. The portal at the northeast corner will introduce the quality and character of the campus and will begin one of the formative sequences of spaces that deﬁne the campus experience. It should be seen as an important transition, but not as a boundary. Values integral to the building concept must be resonant with principles of daily life to create a meaningful built environment that reﬂects and promotes shared beliefs about sustainable living. They include limiting the use of natural resources to reduce our environmental footprint; employing the embodied value of today’s built environment for maximum future ﬂexibility and reuse; 80 Talking Stick MGA Partners, Architects (mgapartners.com), located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has worked with numerous campuses including Princeton and Indiana universities. and crafting places that are efﬁcient, ﬁnancially viable, and readily serviceable. This conceptual approach proposes four areas where meaningful sustainable impacts can be made in college housing: in the residential environment, energy reduction, water use efﬁciency, and reduction of embodied energy.

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Talking Stick - May/June 2008

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