The project for Rhodes Hall encompasses two renovated floors for the University’s School of Engineering. Both spaces reset the relationship between university learning space and the larger communities of the academic building through transparency and a variety of open collaborative spaces. The renovated spaces critique the notions of discrete generic workspace in a learning facility and recast learning space as open and participatory. The new spaces also employ smart classroom and distance learning for academic colleagues to communicate with counterparts around the world and at the new New York Tech Campus on Roosevelt Island. In this new climate of collaborative academic learning space, the design not only rethinks the relationship between programmed research space and collaborative work space but also reinforces the idea that learning occurs in an atmosphere that is conscious of interrelationships and contexts. The design of the new spaces provides a multiplicity of new types of learning scenarios and space types, invites visibility into the new spaces from the existing building, and celebrates views to the campus and natural environment. Spaces that were previously dark or carved up into smaller rooms are now large, open, and filled with the changing light of day.
