Designed by Pritzker Architecture Prize–winner José Rafael Moneo, the 43,000 square feet and five floors of space were imagined as “ unpretentious” and adaptable to its many uses, including exhibition galleries and studios—think minimal, with sharp lines softened by varying degrees of natural light. Always a step ahead, The Chace Center is LEED-certified (a green building rating system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council) and, through its inventive design, takes into consideration issues of circulation and the optimization of space and light.

 

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY Department of Philosophy, 2007 Steven Holl Architects New York University is as much a gathering place and heart-center of New York City as Central Park or Times Square. As a venerable vortex of the city’s freethinkers, the university commissioned the visionaries from Steven Holl Architects to conceive its two-year-old Department of Philosophy.

Although the fresh design (a renovation of the 1890 building in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village) offers a luminous new environment for the multiuse space, it’s the soaring and magical stairwell, which changes direction at every floor and has changing light effects with every season, that beautifully anchors this ambitious new learning space.

 

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA Skirkanich Hall, 2006 Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects The Philadelphia Inquirer’s art critic referred to UPenn’s newly designed engineering building as “Philadelphia’s best new building in years,” and it’s a well-deserved accolade, considering the elegant-yet-industrial design engineered by husband-and-wife architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. Known as Skirkanich Hall, this commanding building is home to research and instructional laboratories—spaces positioned around a “sculptural, redundant flight of stairs.” The architects also employed a mixture of brick, zinc paneling, concrete and

glass to create this organic yet unabashedly modern design.

MANHATTANVILLE COLLEGE Ohnell Environmental Park, 2006 Maya Lin with David Hotson Architect Manhattanville College’s mission is to prepare and educate ethically and socially responsible students for the real world. These days, being a global community leader of tomorrow can take its toll. But when the stress and challenges of socially conscious student life are bearing down, the college’s local community can seek a bit of refuge in the campus’s peaceful and idyllic Ohnell Environmental Park— the major draw being the Maya Lin– restored Lady Chapel. Also in the park, Lin designed a LEED-certified environmental classroom that boasts lots of glass and sustainably harvested wood, yet the chapel—the oldest of three in Westchester County—seamlessly merges the past and the present. It features restored stonework and an ethereal translucent roof ... the perfect perch for a little pregraduation meditation.