Barnard Hall Redux

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For more than a century, students entering Barnard Hall immediately encountered a wall. It wasn’t exactly the ideal metaphor for a college known for breaking down barriers. But in designing the new Francine A. LeFrak Foundation Center for Well-Being, architect Carol Loewenson ’76, ’79 GSAPP, and her team broke through the wall that for generations stood between the community and the space beyond.

“Back when I was a student here, they were so pressed for space that it was hard to find your place,” Loewenson says from the offices of Mitchell Giurgola, the architecture firm that she and her five partners lead. “For me, Barnard was more of an idea than a place. There was space for academics and extracurricular activities, and little else. Now there is much more.”

Today, visitors entering east from Broadway still encounter the grand old lobby Loewenson did when she attended Barnard, but now it’s fully restored and opens to a contemporary space flooded with natural light pouring in from Claremont Avenue. Three large archways guide visitors toward three areas dedicated to particular pillars of well-being: mental, physical, and financial.

Even though the programming needs vary in terms of square footage, each section looks as important as the next, with similar glass walls fronting the gym and the rooms devoted to mental and financial well-being.

Loewenson says that adding a new stairwell at the northwest corner transformed the overall layout. Besides fulfilling the utilitarian role of bringing visitors up to the locker rooms or downstairs to the new theatre, the stairwell anchors a generous east-west corridor that cuts through at an angle, inviting foot traffic and chance encounters. The new corridor bisects the old north-south hall, which was painstakingly restored.

“I think it’s a very lofty space,” she says of the old hall and lobby. “Those kinds of collective places are important for academia; they give a sense of connection to the past.”

She recalls the vaulted halls with their polished terrazzo floors as always being one of the most active areas on campus, with residents heading to and from the dorms and commuters heading to class from Broadway. New infrastructure systems meant that the vaults had to be probed so that the new systems could be threaded into the ceiling without disturbing the original design. The procedure was a bit like “exploratory surgery,” she says. Other design concerns included soundproofing the gym floor and placing equipment in a manner that would least disturb the theatre below. In addition, sustainability remained, as always, a priority.

“Barnard wanted to be really smart about how they spent their money,” she says, “and one of the largest energy loads in a building is the lighting, so we thought about how much natural light we could capture.” She adds that while newer and soon-to-be completed buildings add additional communal space, the wellness center provides a unique opportunity that she and her colleagues identify with.

“This project really resonated with us because it’s about honoring the past and embracing the future,” she says, noting that her firm is at work restoring several old New York City library buildings. “This is the first building at Barnard; it’s the foundation. You want to be able to see it and embrace it but then be able to add all these new ideas, put them in, and make it feel like it was inevitable.” 

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