Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Columbia University

Campbell Sports Center

  • 10/01/13
Campbell Sports Center 

PHOTOS © IWAN BAAN

Located on the northernmost edge of Manhattan, the Campbell Sports Center forms a new gateway to the Baker Athletics Complex, the primary athletics facility for Columbia University’s outdoor sports program.

The first new athletics building to be constructed on Columbia University’s campus since the mid-1970s, the Campbell Sports Center, designed by Steven Holl Architects, is the new cornerstone of the revitalized Baker Athletics Complex and provides increased program space for the entire intercollegiate athletics program. The facility, which adds approximately 48,000 square feet of space, houses strength and conditioning spaces, offices for varsity sports, theater-style meeting rooms, a hospitality suite and student-athlete study rooms.

The design concept of the Campbell Sports Center, “points on the ground, lines in space” — like field play diagrams used for football, soccer and baseball — develops from point foundations on the sloping site. Just as points and lines in diagrams yield the physical push and pull on the field, the building’s elevations push and pull in space.

The building shapes an urban corner on Broadway and 218th Street, then lifts up to form a portal, connecting the playing field with the streetscape. Extending over a stepped landscape, blue soffits heighten the openness of the urban scale portico to the Baker Athletics Complex.

With an exposed concrete and steel structure and a sanded-aluminum facade, the building connects back to Baker Field’s unique history. In 1693, The King’s Bridge, which spanned the Spuyten Duyvil Creek, was the main access route into Manhattan. The current infrastructure of the Broadway Bridge carries the elevated subway, and Broadway, with a lift capacity of hundreds of tons. Its detail and structure are reflected in the Campbell Sports Center.

This article originally appeared in the College Planning & Management October 2013 issue of Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • Tennessee Middle School Completes Health, Life Safety Renovations

    The Giles County Board of Education in Pulaski, Tenn., recently announced that a series of renovation projects has been completed at Bridgeforth Middle School, according to a news release. The district partnered with Wold Architects & Engineers and Brindley Construction to modernize building systems at one of the district’s oldest schools.

  • FGCU Breaks Ground on New Health Sciences Building

    Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) has launched construction on a major new academic facility that leaders say will reshape healthcare education in Southwest Florida for decades to come, according to university news.

  • abstract illustration of school gym

    How the Gymnasium Can Serve as a Model for Learning Space Design

    Multipurpose gyms work because flexibility was built into the brief from the start, not retrofitted later. The same logic applies to academic spaces.

  • Ohio State University Opens 26-Story Hospital

    The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center recently opened in Columbus, Ohio, standing 26 stories and covering 1.9 million square feet, according to a university news release. The project marks ten years of effort and is the university’s largest single-facility construction project ever.