BD Campus Center
Franklin Lakes, NJ
Commercial
2008
Commercial
2008
The Campus Center houses the cafeteria and ties the knot between the two discreet buildings that once framed the “great lawn”; the vestigial gesture of the corporate campus. To counterpose the original idea of separation between working classes, the lawn and the eventual campus center became the symbol of a new, unified collaborative workforce.
The location is a corporate campus and the site is a prominent ceremonial lawn framed by the two massive masonry office buildings. The CEO imagined a new campus center as the virtual knot that would join the two stand-alone office buildings and unify the campus of executive management and technical staff. A cafeteria serves as social glue in realizing the objectives for loosening the aseptic culture, the sum of which translated into a re-contextualized built form.
The notion of occupying open space without compromising its openness was a compelling dialectic that bled into other dichotomous ideas of organic/synthetic, object/void, earth/roof. A process of understanding these currents took shape through models and sketches that in some cases were literally translated into the reality we see. The result is an asymmetrical composition of polygons shaped by the program and by the site contours; a complicated set of coordinates that allow the x, y and z dimensions to occur in a seeming random fashion.
Absent a front door, access into the campus center is through the grass-roofed connectors. The building as seen from the entry road is a variant of the great lawn, retained by a discontinuous folded plane that reveals a glassy slot: a point of access on a need-to-know basis. The concrete retaining walls and sod-covered roof bend and break to define the interior spatial hierarchy that is more about catering to attitudes that to function. A new typology emerges more fitting to the contemporary work culture.
A south-facing dining terrace is a metaphor for entry yet access is exclusively through the connecting concourses. Two central site walls shape and bifurcate the spaces and like the existing buildings they attempt to unite, never complete into a single closed object. Instead, they construct a light-filled figural void that indexes the contours of the circulation below and the sloping/folding of the roof plane above. What begins as a narrow slot of daylight morphs into a continuous surface of glass with a seventy-foot span.
Awards:
American Institute of Architects, Chapter Awards Pennsylvania Architectural Excellence Award – 2014
NJ Merit Award - 2013
Merit Award – 2015
American Architecture Award
Chicago Athenaeum – 2008
The location is a corporate campus and the site is a prominent ceremonial lawn framed by the two massive masonry office buildings. The CEO imagined a new campus center as the virtual knot that would join the two stand-alone office buildings and unify the campus of executive management and technical staff. A cafeteria serves as social glue in realizing the objectives for loosening the aseptic culture, the sum of which translated into a re-contextualized built form.
The notion of occupying open space without compromising its openness was a compelling dialectic that bled into other dichotomous ideas of organic/synthetic, object/void, earth/roof. A process of understanding these currents took shape through models and sketches that in some cases were literally translated into the reality we see. The result is an asymmetrical composition of polygons shaped by the program and by the site contours; a complicated set of coordinates that allow the x, y and z dimensions to occur in a seeming random fashion.
Absent a front door, access into the campus center is through the grass-roofed connectors. The building as seen from the entry road is a variant of the great lawn, retained by a discontinuous folded plane that reveals a glassy slot: a point of access on a need-to-know basis. The concrete retaining walls and sod-covered roof bend and break to define the interior spatial hierarchy that is more about catering to attitudes that to function. A new typology emerges more fitting to the contemporary work culture.
A south-facing dining terrace is a metaphor for entry yet access is exclusively through the connecting concourses. Two central site walls shape and bifurcate the spaces and like the existing buildings they attempt to unite, never complete into a single closed object. Instead, they construct a light-filled figural void that indexes the contours of the circulation below and the sloping/folding of the roof plane above. What begins as a narrow slot of daylight morphs into a continuous surface of glass with a seventy-foot span.
Awards:
American Institute of Architects, Chapter Awards Pennsylvania Architectural Excellence Award – 2014
NJ Merit Award - 2013
Merit Award – 2015
American Architecture Award
Chicago Athenaeum – 2008
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BD Campus
Center
Center
Franklin Lakes, NJ
2008
2008
Becton
Dickinson
Campus
Center
Dickinson
Campus
Center
Franklin Lakes, NJ
Commercial
2008
Commercial
2008
The Campus Center houses the cafeteria and ties the knot between the two discreet buildings that once framed the “great lawn”; the vestigial gesture of the corporate campus. To counterpose the original idea of separation between working classes, the lawn and the eventual campus center became the symbol of a new, unified collaborative workforce.
The location is a corporate campus and the site is a prominent ceremonial lawn framed by the two massive masonry office buildings. The CEO imagined a new campus center as the virtual knot that would join the two stand-alone office buildings and unify the campus of executive management and technical staff. A cafeteria serves as social glue in realizing the objectives for loosening the aseptic culture, the sum of which translated into a re-contextualized built form.
The notion of occupying open space without compromising its openness was a compelling dialectic that bled into other dichotomous ideas of organic/synthetic, object/void, earth/roof. A process of understanding these currents took shape through models and sketches that in some cases were literally translated into the reality we see. The result is an asymmetrical composition of polygons shaped by the program and by the site contours; a complicated set of coordinates that allow the x, y and z dimensions to occur in a seeming random fashion.
Absent a front door, access into the campus center is through the grass-roofed connectors. The building as seen from the entry road is a variant of the great lawn, retained by a discontinuous folded plane that reveals a glassy slot: a point of access on a need-to-know basis. The concrete retaining walls and sod-covered roof bend and break to define the interior spatial hierarchy that is more about catering to attitudes that to function. A new typology emerges more fitting to the contemporary work culture.
A south-facing dining terrace is a metaphor for entry yet access is exclusively through the connecting concourses. Two central site walls shape and bifurcate the spaces and like the existing buildings they attempt to unite, never complete into a single closed object. Instead, they construct a light-filled figural void that indexes the contours of the circulation below and the sloping/folding of the roof plane above. What begins as a narrow slot of daylight morphs into a continuous surface of glass with a seventy-foot span.
Awards:
American Institute of Architects, Chapter Awards Pennsylvania Architectural Excellence Award – 2014
NJ Merit Award - 2013
Merit Award – 2005
American Architecture Award
Chicago Athenaeum – 2008
Regional Concrete Awards
Grand Award New Jersey Concrete 45th Annual Awards - 2008
The location is a corporate campus and the site is a prominent ceremonial lawn framed by the two massive masonry office buildings. The CEO imagined a new campus center as the virtual knot that would join the two stand-alone office buildings and unify the campus of executive management and technical staff. A cafeteria serves as social glue in realizing the objectives for loosening the aseptic culture, the sum of which translated into a re-contextualized built form.
The notion of occupying open space without compromising its openness was a compelling dialectic that bled into other dichotomous ideas of organic/synthetic, object/void, earth/roof. A process of understanding these currents took shape through models and sketches that in some cases were literally translated into the reality we see. The result is an asymmetrical composition of polygons shaped by the program and by the site contours; a complicated set of coordinates that allow the x, y and z dimensions to occur in a seeming random fashion.
Absent a front door, access into the campus center is through the grass-roofed connectors. The building as seen from the entry road is a variant of the great lawn, retained by a discontinuous folded plane that reveals a glassy slot: a point of access on a need-to-know basis. The concrete retaining walls and sod-covered roof bend and break to define the interior spatial hierarchy that is more about catering to attitudes that to function. A new typology emerges more fitting to the contemporary work culture.
A south-facing dining terrace is a metaphor for entry yet access is exclusively through the connecting concourses. Two central site walls shape and bifurcate the spaces and like the existing buildings they attempt to unite, never complete into a single closed object. Instead, they construct a light-filled figural void that indexes the contours of the circulation below and the sloping/folding of the roof plane above. What begins as a narrow slot of daylight morphs into a continuous surface of glass with a seventy-foot span.
Awards:
American Institute of Architects, Chapter Awards Pennsylvania Architectural Excellence Award – 2014
NJ Merit Award - 2013
Merit Award – 2005
American Architecture Award
Chicago Athenaeum – 2008
Regional Concrete Awards
Grand Award New Jersey Concrete 45th Annual Awards - 2008