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New Student Union, ASU
Polytechnic Campus
Atwater Commons
Hamilton Village Towers,
University of Pennsylvania
Kenyon Athletic Center
Original Student Center
Expansion
The Warehouse
Tangeman University Center
University of Chicago, Graduate School of
Business
University Center of Lake
County
Westminster Theatre & Cultural Center
and Coastline Community College Learning CenterTangeman University Center
Gwathmey Siegel renovates a student union, mediating between old and new campus buildings outside and offering surprises inside.
The Tangeman University Center, a Modern, light-filled student center with a Federal Style facade, represents a change in direction for the University of Cincinnati’s Signature Architecture program. In 1989, the school began bringing in high-profile architects to energize a hilly, 137-acre campus that, over time, had become disorganized and dominated by automobiles. The first new buildings—by Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, and Henry N. Cobb—created distinct academic precincts. Then, as a campus plan by Hargreaves Associates was implemented, the emphasis shifted to coordination, linkages, and the creation of a “quality of campus life” that the university had lacked. The Janus-faced center creates a transition—both physically and stylistically—between a campus green surrounded by old Classical-style brick classroom buildings and bold new recreational facilities by Moore Ruble Yudell, Morphosis, and Bernard Tschumi.
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Gwathmey Siegel was asked to renovate and enlarge a redbrick, colonnaded student union. Designed by Hake & Hake in 1935, it features a tower based on Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. The building occupies a sloping site between a historic academic quadrangle and a football stadium built in 1912 on lower ground in what is now the middle of campus. The school wanted the architect to maintain a continuity of image with the existing campus, bring natural light into the interiors, and expand the number and size of facilities. It aimed to preserve an 800-seat, multipurpose hall, restaurant, and game room, while adding facilities for food service, a campus bookstore, a 200-seat movie theater, convenience store, credit union, conference rooms, and student lounges. The program also called for connections to a new visitors center, student services building, and Hargreaves’s “MainStreet” corridor, which links academic areas and recreational facilities in an attempt to create a lively center of student activity.
Charles Gwathmey and Gregory Karn, working with GBBN of Cincinnati, turned the University Center into an institutional version of the kind of house that people often describe as “Queen Anne front, Mary Ann behind.” They preserved its Federal Style facade but sheathed its large-scale, drum-shaped rear elevation in black zinc paneling and glass. This dramatic space encompasses an amphitheater overlooking athletic fields and a 600-seat food court; a game room on the lowest level opens to the newly created Stadium Plaza. A south wing houses a new multipurpose Great Hall that accommodates 1,000 people, the central campus kitchen, a restaurant, and the campus bookstore on an interior corridor leading to the visitors center in Leers Weinzapfel’s University Pavilion.
Formal name of project: Tangeman University Center
Location: Cincinnati, OH
Gross square footage: 180,000 sq.ft.
Total construction cost: $38 million
Completion Date: South Wing: February, 2003; North Wing: April, 2004
Owner: University of Cincinnati
Architect:
Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects,
475 Tenth Avenue
New York, NY 10018
Tel: 212 947 1240
Fax: 212 967 0890
www.gwathmey-siegel.com
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