The site of the Project is East Sibley Hall, 3rd Floor in the College of Architecture, Art & Planning at Cornell University, Ithaca Campus.
The renovation of the third floor of East Sibley Hall affords the campus, the Arts Quad and the College of Architecture Art and Planning the ability to create a model in the campus for an academic space that is connective, collaborative and vital with a strong material and design culture. East Sibley 3rd floor is a connective node within the existing network of the Cornell campus and the mini-campus of buildings that are comprised of Sibley, Millstein, Tjaden and Rand Halls and the Foundry.
The Scope of Work includes the build-out of the 3rd Floor of East Sibley Hall for use by the Department of Architecture as faculty offices/collaborative space and architecture student studio space. The project includes both design and building maintenance issues relating the spaces of the 3rd floor of East Sibley Hall. The scope also includes structural reinforcement to stabilize the existing roof of the space as well as new openings in existing interior masonry walls.
The approach to the historic East Sibley Hall and the top floor of the building follows a line of inquiry that holds the existing building and the new renovation of the interior space and certain key exterior elements up to examination so as to create a dialogue amongst the architectural elements. In this approach, the design resolution is not simply oppositional, ie new vs. old, but is more nuanced and at times indistinguishable where the new begins and the existing stops.