Steven Holl provides a new home for the NYU Department of Philosophy with porosity in mind

摘要

Crowded into one floor of an old classroom building until 2007, New York University's philosophy department had quarters far less grand than its top-notch reputation. Its new home, fashioned by Steven Holl Architects (SHA) inside a nearby 30,000-square-foot landmark building, finally matches the faculty's accommodations with its renown. Like its counterparts at other universities, NYU's philosophy department has experienced a surge in popularity during the past decade and now counts 140 undergraduate majors. SHA's task was to convert a 118-year-old corner building, originally designed by Alfred Zucker as a warehouse and later used by the university as offices and music studios, into thought-provoking spaces for a growing department. To do this, Steven Holl, FAIA, applied notions of "porosity"-a signature concept of his that features multiple incisions and openings-to the interior of the stone building. "Rather than being preoccupied by solid, independent, objectlike forms, porosity addresses the experiential phenomena of spatial sequences that trigger emotions and joy in architecture," he explains.