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
| Sep 14, 2022
Indian tribe’s new educational campus supports culturally appropriate education
The Kenaitze Indian Tribe recently opened the Kahtnuht’ana Duhdeldiht Campus (Kenai River People’s Learning Place), a new education center in Kenai, Alaska.
University Buildings | Sep 9, 2022
Alan Schlossberg, AIA, LEED AP, joins DesignGroup’s Pittsburgh studio as Regional Practice Leader
Alan Schlossberg, AIA, LEED AP, has joined DesignGroup as a principal of the firm and regional practice leader.
| Sep 2, 2022
New UMass Medical School building enables expanded medical class sizes, research labs
A new nine-story, 350,000 sf biomedical research and education facility under construction at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School in Worcester, Mass., will accommodate larger class sizes and extensive lab space.
| Sep 1, 2022
The University of Iowa opens the new Stanley Museum of Art, a public museum for both discovering and teaching art
The University of Iowa recently completed its new Stanley Museum of Art, a public teaching museum designed by BNIM.
University Buildings | Aug 25, 2022
Higher education, striving for ‘normal’ again, puts student needs at the center of project planning
Sustainability and design flexibility are what higher education clients are seeking consistently, according to the dozen AEC Giants contacted for this article. “University campuses across North America are commissioning new construction projects designed to make existing buildings and energy systems more sustainable, and are building new flexible learning space that bridge the gap between remote and in-person learning,” say Patrick McCafferty, Arup’s Education Business Leader–Americas East region, and Matt Humphries, Education Business Leader in Canada region.
Giants 400 | Aug 22, 2022
Top 90 University Contractors and Construction Management Firms for 2022
Turner Construction, Whiting-Turner Contracting, PCL Construction Enterprises, and DPR Construction lead the ranking of the nation's largest university sector contractors and construction management (CM) firms, as reported in Building Design+Construction's 2022 Giants 400 Report.
Giants 400 | Aug 22, 2022
Top 85 University Engineering + EA Firms for 2022
AECOM, Jacobs, Salas O'Brien, and IMEG head the ranking of the nation's largest university sector engineering and engineering/architecture (EA) firms, as reported in Building Design+Construction's 2022 Giants 400 Report.
Giants 400 | Aug 22, 2022
Top 150 University Architecture + AE Firms for 2022
Gensler, CannonDesign, SmithGroup, and Perkins and Will top the ranking of the nation's largest university sector architecture and architecture/engineering (AE) firms, as reported in Building Design+Construction's 2022 Giants 400 Report.
Giants 400 | Aug 22, 2022
Top 90 Construction Management Firms for 2022
CBRE, Alfa Tech, Jacobs, and Hill International head the rankings of the nation's largest construction management (as agent) and program/project management firms for nonresidential and multifamily buildings work, as reported in Building Design+Construction's 2022 Giants 400 Report.
Giants 400 | Aug 22, 2022
Top 200 Contractors for 2022
Turner Construction, STO Building Group, Whiting-Turner, and DPR Construction top the ranking of the nation's largest general contractors, CM at risk firms, and design-builders for nonresidential buildings and multifamily buildings work, as reported in Building Design+Construction's 2022 Giants 400 Report.
