Q & A WITH
MICHAEL MANFREDI

THE ARCHITECT

He’s half of the leading New York-based architecture design team Weiss/Manfredi. In 2003, Michael Manfredi and his wife and partner, Marion Weiss, emerged as the architects who would be charged with adding 70,000 square feet of space to Barnard’s campus, and to do so with a thoughtful blend of past, present, and future. Here, Manfredi shares some thoughts about and reactions to tackling this project for Barnard.

Throughout the design process I imagine you spent some time in and around our campus, what specific elements or issues struck you about the students, the activities, or the academic life?

Marion and I spend a lot of time in the campus area. We were struck spatially by how precious open spaces like Lehman Lawn are used by the students. They are finely scaled down open spaces that are inventive, appropriated and used by students in so many ways. Over the year, despite the weather, the benches were used, as spaces to hangout and meet each other. We noticed how all these bits of open space through the campus are used intensely by the students. Knowing how public room in New York is precious, the use of these open spaces said a lot about the students and how they are comfortable with density, it is why they go to school in New York. So it was less about the curricula, the academics, and more about the typical student, who is sophisticated, comfortable with being in the city, with a high level of energy, different people, and different social groups.

How did these influence your design?

We knew the Nexus would have to be a dense building; mixed uses are part of the Barnard aesthetic. Heavy internal spaces, with the ascending atria we wanted to take the lawn and pull it up vertically into the building. While opening it up visually to Broadway, we make these public spaces visible and connected to the city. The Nexus becomes a lens for activities in Barnard. Also, with the smaller details, we tried to provide for lose fit spaces, where two students can sit at a bench at talk informally after class. The circulation, stairs, halls, open up to places that are informal and unprogrammed, these are crucial to the idea of the peripheral vision concept.

In some ways the neoclassical image of Barnard Hall or the Beaux-Arts style of Milbank Hall impress upon us the history of the students that came before us. How does the design take into account the existing classical architecture while simultaneously moving forward? How does the design of the Nexus respond to or negotiate the differences?

With buildings like Lehman from the sixties, and Sulzberger from the 80s, we can see that Barnard isn’t frozen in time. While it is a small collection of classical,Beaux-Arts buildings, it is a rich and diverse collection. With the Nexus we did not want to create a Disneyland copy of Milbank or the other buildings, but rather through the size, specifically aligning the height with Milbank it will be a neighbor or complement to its surrounding. Also with the use of terracotta glass for the exterior it will blend in terms of color to the brick buildings. It is through material relationships that it fits into the campus.

From the renderings and briefings the concept of transparency and overlapping visual connections seem to drive many of the design decisions. The continuous sight lines and open spaces are said to stimulate or encourage “accidental encounters.” Why do you believe this is an integral part of a student center?
How does this make the Nexus unique from any other student center?

Yes it is unique to this student center; but it is because accidental encounters are unique to cities. It is different from a student center at a college in Massachusetts or in New Mexico because New York is a spontaneous place with lots of energy, offhand, offroute encounters. As architects we can help frame different spaces, we must create spaces that aren’t scripted. We hope that this building is used in the obvious ways that are programmed, but some might have unchoreographed, unpredicted spaces, where students might use them to have a poetry reading or choreograph a dance. We wanted to make the architecture responsive to these unplanned activities.

What space in the Nexus are you most looking forward to being able to experience?

I don’t want to make it sound like we have a bias or a preference, but the architecture studios will be amazing. Also Marion and I are excited to see the meandering stairs on the west side of the building. There are certain points were you can see campus from the north and from the west. It’s a transition space that will be interesting.

When you imagine a prospective student walking through the Barnard gates, what impression will the Nexus communicate to the future student about Barnard?

That Barnard is an amazing, lively place. It is not your typical Ivy League. It is dynamic and it has a history that moves forward; it is not frozen in time.