Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

NYU to Open New Academic Center in Greenwich Village

  • By Matt Jones
  • 01/12/23

New York University in New York City is getting ready to open its newest academic building, the John A. Paulson Center. The 735,000-square-foot vertical campus in Greenwich Village was designed by Davis Brody Bond and KieranTimberlake, according to a news release, and its purpose is to both demonstrate and encourage students’ academic and social lives. The facility includes academic, athletic, performing arts, and residential space, as well as common areas and a pedestrian corridor open to the public.

The center is named after NYU alumnus John A. Paulson, who contributed a $100-million gift toward the building’s construction. A news release reports that the gift is the largest that the NYU Washington Square Campus has ever received, as well as the largest building that NYU has built in the Washington Square core. Construction began in 2016, and the building is scheduled to open this month.

“Great cities need great universities, and universities need space to fulfill their academic missions,” said NYU President Andrew Hamilton. “The Mercer site [named for the building’s placement on Mercer Street] is a once-in-a-generation campus building, and its singleness is matched only by the uncommon generosity of John Paulson’s extraordinary gift. We are honored by his support for the University and particularly this building, which fulfills so many crucial needs for NYU now and far into the future. We are immensely grateful to him, and thrilled to recognize him by naming the building the John A. Paulson Center.”

The Paulson Center features 58 classrooms; athletic facilities for men’s and women’s basketball, fencing, wrestling, volleyball, and squash, as well as a six-lane pool; performance spaces including a proscenium theater, warehouse theater, orchestra ensemble room, and support space for the School of Music; three residential towers with space for 407 freshmen and 42 faculty apartments; communal study spaces; 25,000 square feet of green roof space; and high-efficiency heating and cooling systems, according to the news release.

About the Author

Matt Jones is senior editor of Spaces4Learning. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • Cleveland High School Breaks Ground on Modernization

    Portland Public Schools in Portland, Ore., recently announced that construction has begun on a modernization project for Cleveland High School, according to a news release. The existing building will be replaced with a new, 300,000-square-foot facility at the same site.

  • Rethinking K-12 Schools as a Continuous Learning Experience

    Most students move through three or more separate facilities during their K-12 journey, yet the built environments they encounter at each stage have traditionally been designed in isolation, with little continuity in spatial language, learning philosophy, or physical resources. Each new school is a reset with different layouts, learning models, expectations, and ways of moving through a building. The next generation of school design is making the case that the first day of kindergarten and the last day of high school can and should feel connected through common support systems and infrastructure in the physical environment.

  • Minnesota District Opens New PreK–12 School

    Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop Schools in Gibbon, Minn., recently announced that construction is complete on a new, $68.9-million school for students in grades PreK–12, according to a news release.

  • URI Cuts Underwater Ribbon on New Ocean Robotics Laboratory

    The University of Rhode Island recently held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new Ocean Robotics Laboratory at its Narragansett Bay Campus, according to a news release. Two students used a remotely operated vehicle to cut an underwater ribbon in a 30-by-20-foot test tank.