Kenyon College Breaks Ground on Building Trio
By SCN Staff
GAMBIER, Ohio—Three buildings designed by GUND Partnership have broken ground at Kenyon College. The new West Quad buildings include a new library, an interdisciplinary academic building and an admissions building with financial aid center for student recruitment. Construction for all buildings will be complete in 2021.
A new highly flexible state-of-the-art library will support active and collaborative learning. It will feature a variety of environments to encourage student growth, curiosity and exploration. Special Collections will be prominently exhibited at the building’s entry and a teaching lab will create more opportunity to integrate the unique collections into course work. Academic Advising, Career Development, the Registrar and Student Accessibility Services will move to the library as an integrated hub connecting work inside the classroom with work outside of it. To encourage innovation, two sandbox spaces, one for technology and one for teaching, will provide students and faculty needed space to explore transformative technology and teaching practices. The Office of Institutional Research will be located in the library, capitalizing on the College’s commitment to assessing the inputs and outcomes of a Kenyon education.
With a focus on accessibility and openness, the new academic building will facilitate cross-pollination of ideas across and beyond the social science disciplines and will contain the anthropology collections and lab. The building features open commons on each floor, flexible classroom spaces adaptable to continuing changes in pedagogy, classroom sizes of 16-40 students, collaborative workspaces, and a 300-seat auditorium.
A new home for admissions and financial aid will bring together the offices, which currently operate in two separate buildings. Campus tours will depart from a new terrace anchoring the north end of the West Quad and will bring prospective students into the academic core. Multi-purpose spaces inside the building will allow greater flexibility in supporting and celebrating the campus community. All three buildings are pursuing LEED Certification with the library designed to achieve LEED Gold. Together, these individual projects strengthen the fabric of the entire campus and retain the distinctive identity that Kenyon has developed over its 195-year history.
These projects join two recently completed buildings for Kenyon’s renowned English department, also designed by GUND. Each provides modern office and academic spaces important in the continued recruitment of great talent to one of Kenyon’s most popular majors. The new West Quad will further Kenyon’s impact on student success, from the time a prospective student steps on campus to the time they celebrate commencement, positioning them to define and achieve their post-graduate goals.
GUND Partnership works across the country with leading academic and cultural institutions to explore the power and potential of the built environment.