Place for breaks: von der Heyden Pavilion

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When Abhijit Prabhu '02 returned to Duke's campus for a visit last November, he was surprised by how much things had changed in his absence. "It was clear to me," he told a group assembled to dedicate the new Bostock Library, "that this is not the Duke I went to. My sister graduated in May, and this isn't even the Duke she went to."

Prabhu's observation was made in reference to the bustling new library--as a student, he had served on its planning committee--but his comments could easily extend to the whole campus. Over the last four years, Duke has begun to unveil the products of an aggressive construction campaign. Since 2002, the university has completed more than a dozen new projects--seven in the last year alone--including a library, an art museum, a football building, two residential complexes, a four-part engineering complex, a public-policy building, an eye institute, two genetics research buildings, and major additions to the Washington Duke Inn and to the divinity, business, and law schools. Scheduled for completion this year are the 280,000-square-foot French Science Center, two medical-research buildings, a nursing-school addition, and a student plaza.

The new construction represents the university's largest and most concentrated growth since East and West campuses were built in the 1920s and 1930s and may be seen as part of a nationwide building boom in higher education. Yet Duke's latest foray into the land of cranes and bulldozers represents not just an attempt to add capacity; it also demonstrates a new understanding of the way that students and faculty members live, learn, teach, and conduct research. The new buildings integrate public and social space with academic space to a degree not previously seen on campus. Their interior layouts are designed to encourage formal group learning and informal interactions that administrators hope will lead to key academic advances and provide a physical framework for Duke's emergent culture of interdisciplinary research. At the same time, their exteriors reflect attempts to mesh modern architectural vocabulary with Duke's traditional Collegiate Gothic and Georgian styles.

"What we're doing," says law professor Thomas Metzloff, who worked closely with planners on the law school project, "is re-conceptualizing how a student lives in an academic building." The result is that "academic" buildings are no longer designed for purely academic purposes. And, likewise, residential or socially oriented buildings are often instilled with some academic or practical purpose.

Among the most obvious manifestations of the new approach to interior space are the large public and social areas that have been created around campus. Seeds of this idea can be seen as early as 1994, with the large atriums in the Sanford Institute of Public Policy and Levine Science Research Center. But the intended use and purpose of these kinds of spaces have been expanded and refined as they've been incorporated into structures like the von der Heyden Pavilion, a glass-enclosed cafÈ located between Bostock and Perkins libraries, the Fuqua School of Business' Fox Center, and the large atriums in the Nasher Museum and the Pratt School of Engineering's Fitzpatrick Center.

University architect John Pearce says that some large spaces have always existed as part of Duke's identity--Baldwin Auditorium and the union building on East Campus, for example, and the Great Hall and Gothic Reading Room on West--but the traditional layout of the university assumed a certain pattern to student life. Typically, academic buildings housed lecture halls, classrooms, laboratories, and offices. Libraries offered individual research and study space. It was left to the student center and the dormitories to host social activities.

In the new academic buildings, students can grab a coffee and study alone or in groups; faculty members can meet or dine informally with students between classes; and departments can host special functions in the evening. These "living-room spaces," as Pearce refers to them, entice "students to hang out there rather than retreat to their rooms." And that, in turn, helps meet the larger university goal, he says, of promoting the integration of faculty members and students and making it easier for them to work and socialize together.

On a Friday in late December, second-year business student Joe Spies is meeting a classmate, Jeff Barber B.S.E. '00, in Fuqua's new Fox Student Center to discuss plans for a business they hope to develop as they look toward graduation in the spring. The two sit opposite each other on leather sofas, propping their feet on a coffee table. Nearby, two law students are studying for an upcoming test. Beyond them, two women sit at a table against the windows, taking an exam online. In the center of the room, caterers chat as they set tables for an evening reception for the Executive M.B.A. Program.

Spies, who had considered attending architecture school before deciding on business, says he can't help noticing the way the building's design affects his academic experience. Business school is not just about classroom learning, he says, but about making connections. "I was very interested in finding a place where people intersect, chaos occurs, and great ideas are generated."

The Fox Center does just that, he says, by providing a central place where people naturally congregate. The large, open main floor of the Fox Center comprises a dining room with tables, chairs, and sofas that double as seating and workspace; an indoor patio used for receptions; a food-service area; and a twenty-four-hour snack bar. "This isn't designed as a dining area," observes Spies, glancing at his surroundings. "This is a social space that happens to have dining."

Jill Worthington, Fuqua's associate dean for finance and administration, says the new building also encourages interaction by making it easy for students to stick around. Everything they need is here in one place, she says, noting that the center even includes lockers, changing rooms, and showers for students returning from a midday jog through Duke Forest or preparing for an interview.

In a similar fashion, the Fitzpatrick Center's cafÈ and large enclosed atrium have given the Pratt School a new sense of self. "From my perspective, Pratt is now a place," says Robert L. Clark, Thomas Lord Professor of engineering and senior associate dean of research for the engineering school. "Sure, the school existed before. But there were no spaces for students to gather between classes, to study, to work in groups. [Fitzpatrick] creates a place for that type of activity."

The type of public space provided by the Fitzpatrick Center's atrium, and a planned entrance hall in the French Science Center, is especially useful in the context of those buildings' focus on interdisciplinary research. In addition to the large public spaces, architects worked to integrate features such as comfortable seating and dry-erase boards in the hallways to help stimulate "intellectual collisions"--planned or impromptu--among faculty members and students of the various disciplines housed there.

Administrators also re-evaluated the way that space is apportioned in these buildings. Under the old system, faculty members were assigned offices and labs based on department. In Fitzpatrick, assignments are based on research interests, Clark says. As director of the Center for Biological Inspired Materials and Material Systems, he oversees a wing of the building that houses researchers from the biomedical-engineering and mechanical-engineering and material-sciences departments, whose research interests overlap. The new building is also designed to further eliminate boundaries between the school's students and faculty members by intermingling labs used for teaching and for research. "That has always been our philosophy," Clark says. "It is just evident now in the way space is laid out."