Landmark Redesign Project to Transform Gallatin School
Landmark Redesign Project to Transform Gallatin School
$27 Million Renovations to Existing Space Support Innovations in Education
When Gallatin first opened its doors in 1972, they led to nothing more than two offices in Rubin Residence Hall, then a women’s dorm. At that time, with a student body of only 17 people, it was known as the University Without Walls (UWW). Part of an initiative developed through the Ford Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education, it was actually one of many UWW “experiments” in higher education that existed across the country. Yet, unlike many of the other fledgling programs, it flourished. From 1973 to 1976, its student body grew to 200 individuals, and its small offices shuttled from one location to another on the NYU campus. In 1976, it became the Gallatin Division. The Division grew to accommodate rising enrollment, and in 1981 moved to its present home at 715 Broadway, where it occupied only a small portion of the space it does today. In 1995, with more than 1,000 enrolled students, it gained official school status and became the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU.
Today, as Gallatin celebrates its 35th anniversary of providing a uniquely progressive, interdisciplinary education, another landmark is about to occur: its space will soon reflect the growth, innovation, and flexibility that have defined the program and given it nationwide recognition. Beginning in the summer of 2007, Gallatin’s home will undergo a $27 million renovation and redesign project that will finally create a physical identity that serves and is consistent with the School’s academic mission to offer a student-centered, individualized education. By the completion of this major project, which has been entirely funded by the support of alumni, parents, and friends, Gallatin will have virtually doubled its size.
“It is especially significant that the School’s expansion is being made possible through the philanthropy of our extended Gallatin family,” states Interim Dean Ali Mirsepassi. “This makes the transformation of the space even more extraordinary and more meaningful to our students and faculty.”
Currently occupying the 5th, 6th, and 8th floors of 715 Broadway, the School will gain the 1st and 4th floors of the building to create a total area of approximately 30,000 square feet—all of which will be completely renovated. The project is scheduled to take place in stages, reaching completion in 2008.
Gallatin has appointed the design firm of Polshek Partnership Architects, LLP for the job. Architects for the award-winning Carnegie Hall Master Plan and the American Museum of Natural History North Side Project, Polshek Partnership’s fundamental philosophy is that elegant architectural responses are both “technically and socially relevant to their time and space,” a notion that is very much in keeping with the Gallatin School’s commitment to global citizenship and forward thinking.
The “new Gallatin” has been meticulously designed, utilizing faculty and student input, to meet the needs of its current and future community members. The space will accommodate different types of learning and a variety of areas of study. Cutting-edge technology, open floor plans, event space, arts studios, and environmentally-friendly elements are all incorporated into the design.
As visitors walk through the doors of the Gallatin building in a new, more accessible entrance on Washington Place, the first thing they will notice is Gallatin’s ground-floor presence. Complete with a lounge, reception area, art gallery, and theatre, the first floor of the School will not only be a comfortable meeting place and information hub, but also a location for large-scale events.
The 120-seat Jerry H. Labowitz Theatre for the Performing Arts, which will be furnished with its own green room and technology control booth, can be used for a broad variety of events, including dramatic productions, dance performances, readings, and film presentations. The theatre space can also be used in conjunction with the adjoining gallery space to create a 285-seat multipurpose auditorium that will accommodate a variety of larger-scale gatherings and signature School events, such as student orientations and the Albert Gallatin Lectures. The theatre will have a unique, custom-made retractable seating system that is on the cutting edge of theatre design technologies, and the theatre and the gallery space will be separated by a retractable wall that can move to accommodate events of varying audience size. The gallery space will be an area in which student and faculty artwork will be displayed throughout the year. Because of Gallatin’s prominent Broadway location, the first-floor theatre and gallery space will enhance the School’s visible presence within the University and Greenwich Village communities.
As you move upstairs to the 4th, 5th, and 6th floors of the building, community and flexibility characterize the layout. The design will be open to foster connections and welcome various audiences, with unique gathering places for students and faculty to collaborate. The overall intention is to create a sense of community—a very important element of any school, but even more so in a program of individualized study, in which students’ and faculty’s interests may send them in divergent paths across the University.
“It is only when you have a vital community that you can achieve great things,” notes Mirsepassi. “Knowing how important this is to the life of our program, we worked with the architects to create a home for students, faculty, and other community members that will promote solidarity and kinship. There is a certain dichotomy to the Gallatin program: though our students each pursue individualized plans of study, they do so with the support and guidance of faculty advisers, professors, administrators, and their peers. The old adage that ‘it takes a village’ rings especially true at Gallatin, and our new space will be the proper foundation for that village.”
The 4th, 5th, and 6th floors will not only house classrooms and offices, but also a Faculty Wing, Arts Suite, Student Activities Wing, colloquium room, advising center, writing center, computer lab, student lounges and galleries, and several “signature spaces.” All of the new academic areas will be equipped for a specialized environment that will encourage interactive learning. Throughout these floors and the rest of the Gallatin building, state-of-the-art technology will complement and define the setting. The entire School will have wireless web access, and all classrooms, gallery spaces, and meeting and conference rooms will have permanent audio visual components and projection capabilities.
The Faculty Wing will serve as a hub of both formal and informal exchange between faculty and students. Complete with a lounge, resource area, and offices for distinguished writers, artists-in-residence, adjunct and visiting faculty, this area is specifically designed to cultivate intellectual and creative collaboration. Special attention has been paid to the design of office space to accommodate the broad range of significant texts necessary for successful student advising. Faculty-student advising relationships will also be supported by the new space, because it will not only allow for one-on-one meetings in more comfortable, appropriate facilities, but also encourage more casual, unplanned interactions between faculty and students, as well as have the capacity for meetings between faculty and small groups of students. In the new design, faculty will have the opportunity to host formal meetings in a conference room and also enjoy informal scholarly discourse in several faculty lounges, the largest of which will be located in the Faculty Wing. Faculty lounges will also provide a much-needed common area for Gallatin’s adjunct professors, thus fostering further connections between colleagues.
The Arts Suite will reflect the prominence of the arts in the Gallatin curriculum, provide much-needed room for student activities that currently take place at other locations on and off the NYU campus, and contain arts faculty offices. The Suite will be home to a large rehearsal studio equipped with an audiovisual system, sprung-wood floor, full height mirrors, dance barre, and curtains that can turn the studio into a screening room, classroom, or theatre rehearsal space. The Suite will also include an arts studio, which will offer an open workspace and suitable equipment conducive to the creation of art of various media. The arts studio could also serve as a venue for workshops conducted by visiting artist/scholars.
The Student Activities Wing will be dedicated to the pursuits of student groups such as the Gallatin Student Council, Gallatin Arts Festival, and all School clubs. In close proximity to Gallatin’s Student Affairs and Student Life staff offices, this area will include club offices and student meeting rooms, as well as multifunctional areas for students to gather for intellectual and social interaction.
The southeast corner on each floor will contain a “signature space”—a multipurpose room that can be used for classes, meetings, seminars, lounges, or events. Signature spaces will have flexible furniture to accommodate these different scenarios, as well as technological capabilities to support a range of activities. Overall, the new building will have more student lounges than Gallatin’s existing space, and these lounges will be larger and placed in locations that will better foster connections and encourage impromptu meetings and interactions. Student lounges will have computer kiosks and projection capabilities, and they will also act as galleries for student work. These features will make the lounges suitable spaces for events and gatherings, such as the Gallatin Coffee House Series or Writing Program readings, which are currently held in other locations at the University. On the whole, the new space will enable Gallatin to create more programs and learning opportunities outside of the classroom, as each floor will have two or three large areas where people can congregate. Because these spaces will be in prime locations, it is anticipated that student awareness of Gallatin programming will also increase, as will student-initiated gatherings.
The last stop on a tour of the new Gallatin building is the 8th floor. Here you will find administrative offices, a Deans’ Office Suite, a lounge, and the Dean’s Conference Room, in which staff meetings and school events such as the Dean’s Mentoring Roundtable Series can take place. The Office of Student Services will have its home here, along with a room for student records.
Because the Gallatin School has a commitment, as a responsible member of the global community, to environmental sustainability, several “green” elements will be included in the new designs. The school’s HVAC (Heating Ventilation and Cooling) system will be highly efficient, and the entire site will contain energy-efficient appliances and lighting. Offices, classrooms, and lounges will be equipped with Greenline furniture that is made from renewable or recycled materials. Based on the current plans, there is also a strong likelihood that Gallatin will be able to reduce its water use by 20 percent. During the demolition and construction project, all debris will be sorted and taken to recycling centers—something that has not yet been done in any other renovation project at NYU. All of these elements have been included into the renovation plans in an effort to reduce the School’s environmental impact.
Assistant Dean for Administration Linda Wheeler Reiss, who is overseeing the renovation project, states, “Gallatin’s student body has a strong interest in making our new home an environmentally friendly one. This is an objective I’m committed to as well, and I am delighted that this project will promote the School’s and the University’s commitment to environmental sustainability. It will also serve as a roadmap for NYU on how to work ‘green’ concepts into other construction and renovation projects. This initiative has sparked wider conversations about how Gallatin can take the lead in environmental issues, and we’ll be working with a team of students, faculty, and staff to promote recycling, energy conservation, and other practices to conserve environmental resources in our new space.”
But beyond all of the blueprints, renderings, and plans, what Gallatin will be achieving is something more than just a changed physical structure.
“Space has a transformative nature, and some of our greatest achievements in creating our future home are yet to be discovered,” states Mirsepassi. “Through meetings with students, faculty, and staff we have gauged our needs, and the project is entrusted to wonderful architects who are renowned for their high-level designs. But there are exciting elements of the new Gallatin space that we won’t realize until we are in the environment and utilizing it on a daily basis. I am certain that the School’s culture will be altered in a very positive way—this was certainly the case with other recent renovation projects at NYU, such as those at the Wagner School and the School of Law. Our School identity and community will strengthen, our academic offerings and extracurricular programming will be enriched, and our students and faculty will thrive.”
The Gallatin School community awaits its new home with great anticipation and would like to extend gratitude to the alumni, parents, and friends who have made this venture possible. The project will break ground in the upcoming months, and plans are in place for alternative classroom and office spaces during the construction period. For more information and updates on this effort, visit www.nyu.edu/gallatin beginning in May.