Avery Hall, built in 1912 as part of the original McKim, Mead, and White campus plan, has been the home to the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, Preservation, and other degree programs for over a century. For the course, we will consider the exterior entryway into Avery, which is often energized by generations of smokers (and the marks of their smoke), and the rest of campus with the main north-south pathway for the eastern side of the Morningside Campus. We will also consider the spatially ambiguous interior lobby, which serves poorly as an entryway into the School, and serves more as an elevator lobby than an interstitial to the Library. We will also consider Avery Plaza, which despite being between Fayerweather, Schermerhorn, the Chapel, and Avery, is named for one of the buildings or, perhaps, the library it is sited upon.
The building and the school share a strange relationship. Rather than having a library housed in the school, the School is situated above a library. The back plaza sits upon the expanded library, whose construction began in 1974. Yet, the front has changed little other than a temporary (and egregious but necessary accessibility ramp) and the disappearance of a lion statue.
Over the years, Avery Plaza has sought experimental approaches to enlivening an otherwise forgotten space. Avery SPOT in 2021 sought to define this otherwise forgotten (and surprisingly liminal) space.
For this edition of the course, we will investigate and make propositions for our own home–Avery and its surroundings–as potential sites.
Click on a tile to learn more about each project:
