Description
This project description is an excerpt from the longer article “Housing Special Populations”. For a comparative analysis and further data on this and all other categories including accompanying graphs, please see the article “A Turning Point”.
Two prominent contemporary student housing projects are IIT State Street Village by Helmut Jahn of 2004 and Simmons Hall at MIT by Steven Holl of 1999 to 2003.
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Sarah Amelar, “Steven Holl Experiments with Constructed ‘Porosity’ in His Design for Simmons Hall,” Architectural Record 191 (May 2003): 204–215.
The State Street Village is located literally beside the El Train in Chicago and houses 367 students in suites of apartment-style units within three U-shape building masses linked together under a common roof. The space between the housing is set aside as landscaped courts and the overall structure appears to be almost integral with the elevated train line which provides for dynamic glimpses of passing trains. Constructed of poured-in-place concrete, glass cladding, and corrugated stainless steel panels, the housing projects a quasi-industrial aesthetic, with rooftop decks and airy lounges as communal space. By contrast, Simmons Hall is 10 storeys in height in a single-bar building, reminiscent of an Unité some 117 meters in length and only sixteen meters wide. It contains 350 dormitory rooms, along with a multitude of non-residential functions, and features non-orthogonal swooping shafts of space that provide for common areas, light shafts, and an almost Gaudíesque appearance on the inside. The contrast with the insistent orthogonal rhythm of the exterior, as well as other parts of the building, is very striking. The outside skin of the building is a matrix of 0.70-meter square windows, allegedly derived from permeable membranes or sponges, but, in reality, forming an exoskeleton that brings the structural loads together on the outside walls. The dormitory rooms are relatively sparse, with the exception of the gridwork of windows, which on the exterior lends a certain scaleless character to what is a large building.
Footnotes
Sarah Amelar, “Steven Holl Experiments with Constructed ‘Porosity’ in His Design for Simmons Hall,” Architectural Record 191 (May 2003): 204–215.
Drawings
Photos
Exterior view along street façade
Exterior view of glazed end façade
Originally published in: Peter G. Rowe, Har Ye Kan, Urban Intensities: Contemporary Housing Types and Territories, Birkhäuser, 2014.