Sherrerd Hall is a place of collaboration, a gathering point intellectually and socially. The 46,244 square foot interdisciplinary office and classroom building exists at the border of two different academic areas on Princeton’s campus, engineering and social sciences. The building replaces a surface parking lot and is adjacent to a primary pedestrian pathway facing a quadrangle on the campus. This location acts as a physical link between social science and engineering buildings, and completes the existing quadrangle, promoting the natural flow of pedestrian circulation. As home to the School of Engineering and Applied Science’s Department of Operations Research and Financial Engineering and Center for Information Technology Policy, an emphasis was put on collaborative work between faculty members of different disciplines with undergraduates, graduate students and post doctoral fellows. As a new and evolving academic initiative, a high degree of flexibility was required to support the varied research that would occur, and the inevitable changes that occur over an institution’s life. Opportunities for collaboration and change were limited by their existing departmental spaces. The program included faculty and graduate student offices, computer labs, a lecture hall, classrooms, study areas and lounges. Spaces for informal meeting and gathering were concentrated around the entry atrium.
Sherrerd Hall expresses its contemporary subject matter with a completely Modern glass building that makes subtle references to the massing and proportions of its neighbors to maintain campus cohesion. The glass skin expresses intellectual transparency as well as modernity, reflecting the neighboring buildings, sky and landscape rather than mimicking their architectural style. At night, a commissioned site-specific light sculpture by artist Jim Isermann calls on the building geometry to create a monumental “chandelier” hanging through the open stairway, causing the building to glow as a “lantern of knowledge”.
View Original