Project Description
Located in Collegetown section of Ithaca, New York, one block off campus from Cornell University, the Center for Business Education is a seven-story, 76,000-square-foot, twenty-first century teaching and learning environment. Interactive classrooms are supported by breakout rooms, faculty and student offices, as well as commons and social spaces. The building accommodates two 90-seat tiered classrooms, two 75-seat tiered classrooms, a divisible, flat-floor classroom for 120 students, and commons and event spaces on the first three floors and a spatially-connected lower level. The Center’s top three floors provide enclosed offices for faculty and administrators, open office work stations, conference rooms and team rooms, and two broadcasting and recording studios. The Center was located off campus to sponsor development and rejuvenate the downtown. Since its opening, adjacent residential and retail projects have been constructed. The Center for Business Education contrasts within its urban context to establish a strong identity and academic center in this commercial zone. The building façade is a combination of clear and patterned glass with a rhythmic arrangement of angled and straight projecting mullion-fins, colored compatibly with the brick of its neighbors. The transparency of the ground floor and the learning commons highlighted by an undulating feature wall of wood slats and video screens embraces the adjacent street. The variegated patterns on the facades serve to reduce its scale, and the setback upper floors along the street are rendered in dark metal to differentiate upper from lower and facilitate a relationship with the smaller scale of adjacent buildings.