Reclaiming an architectural legacy

“The expansion of the John Wooden Center was an opportunity to transform the cold, brutalist building with an architectural exterior worthy of its neighbor, a landmark designed in an Italian Romanesque style — monumental in scale yet intimate in detail. Surrounding the existing structure with a thin “sliver” building the extension gives the structure three facades that reflect the Romanesque aesthetic of the original campus plan.”

Formal in its order and highly responsive to its context, the Arthur Ashe Student Health & Wellness Center (Wooden Center East) reinterprets the pattern mechanisms found in the adjacent building through a contemporary architectural vocabulary. A mixture of brick and buff-colored concrete block, plaster, and terra cotta tiles, the façade responds to the primary, secondary, and tertiary orders of the Romanesque revival buildings. The design complements the historic campus core, while the brickwork and plaster banding create a distinct new image for the building. By using simple architectural elements to connect the building to historic context STIR developed a framework for future additions to the campus that recaptures the spirit of the original master plan and expands it throughout the campus.