An Urban Graduate Center

Abstract

The Urban Graduate Center is an academic village for graduate studies in an urban setting. The project seeks to establish a campus setting for students and professors who will primarily attend the Graduate Center on evenings and weekends. The Graduate Center seeks to extend the fabric of the existing urban area into an abandoned railroad yard site. The project involves a building complex the approximate size of a small city block. The building complex includes places for learning, places for meeting, and places for contemplation. The project offers the opportunity to investigate the process of designing architecture. While the project relates to needs of particular users the discoveries and methods of meeting these needs can be applied to many different forms of architecture. The various functions that will occur in the urban graduate center provide the chance to investigate issues of organization, scale, transitions, and details.