The Pratt Institute Residence Hall has completed and opened on Pratt Institute’s Brooklyn campus. The new residence hall is designed to foster a culture of exploration and invention via a purposeful blending of shared and public living, learning, and maker spaces.
The tower’s exterior is composed primarily of brick with curved stainless steel panels. The materials are intended to actively engage the historic brick campus and neighborhood while setting apart the distinctive forms of the central void and lounge spaces.
The project is located about one block from the main campus gate in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill neighborhood. The main floors are set back from the street with the entrance through a one-story podium. Within the podium, students can use the central event space for social or study activities as well as the adjacent maker spaces, which include studio resources. The tower’s upper floors comprise 14 rooms for two students each. A central lounge on each floor has a work counter and furniture for community use.
A vertical courtyard or “void tower” acts as a distinctive exterior expression that centers student community activity on each floor. The void tower is both an organizational concept for the building as well as a distinctive form that is configured in elevation to expand the dimensions of the openings to the lounges at the upper floors of the building and compress around a skylight central reception lobby.
Hanrahan Meyers Architects worked in collaboration with Cannon Design to design the building. The facade was designed in collaboration with Thornton Tomasetti’s building envelope team.
Related Stories
University Buildings | Nov 6, 2017
A reconstructed building sets the standard for future rehabs at Cornell
Early AE collaboration played a major role in moving this project forward efficiently.
University Buildings | Oct 13, 2017
The University of Oklahoma receives its first residential colleges
The residential communities were designed by KWK Architects and combine living and learning amenities.
University Buildings | Oct 12, 2017
USC to debut new bioscience center next month
The building is designed to maximize recruitment and interaction of scientists and researchers.
University Buildings | Oct 12, 2017
The Center for Wounded Veterans is a first for a university campus
The Chez Family Foundation Center for Wounded Veterans in Higher Education is the first building of its kind on a U.S. college campus.
University Buildings | Oct 10, 2017
A 1920s cheese factory is now a university science building
Almost 15,000 sf of space was added to the original, four-story building.
Sustainability | Oct 9, 2017
New Arizona State University building will reach triple net-zero performance
The science and research complex will include an atrium biome filled with plants and water.
Higher Education | Sep 18, 2017
Campus landscape planning of the future: A University of Wisconsin-Madison case study
Recognizing that the future health of the campus and lake are interdependent, this innovative approach will achieve significant improvements in stormwater management and water quality within the university’s restored, more connected network of historic and culturally rich landscapes.
University Buildings | Sep 15, 2017
New Blinn College Residence Hall hopes to decrease the size of the campus housing wait list
In 2016, more than 400 students were placed on the wait list due to lack of available on-campus housing.
Sports and Recreational Facilities | Sep 11, 2017
Mid-size, multi-use arenas setting a trend for the future
While large 20,000-seat sports venues aren’t going away, mid-size venues provide advantages the big arenas do not in a time of budget constraints and the need for flexibility.
Giants 400 | Sep 7, 2017
Top 95 university construction firms
Turner Construction Co., The Whiting-Turner Contracting Co., and Barton Malow top BD+C’s ranking of the nation’s largest university sector contractor and construction management firms, as reported in the 2017 Giants 300 Report.
