Polshek’s Newhouse III School of Communications at Syracuse University
This building designed by Polshek Partnership Architects is the third in a series of three that comprise the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University in Syracuse, NY. Newhouse III joins existing structures Newhouse 1 (designed by I. M. Pei in 1963) and Newhouse II (designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill in 1972).
Polshek’s strategy was to pay deference to the classically disposed Pei building while being free to innovate elsewhere. As such, the east façade of Newhouse III takes its cues form the materiality, color, proportions and geometries of Pei’s building and completes the plaza of the complex. On the west façade, where the building is unencumbered by historic context, it takes on a sinuous, form clad in a gossamer-like glass skin, whose transparency is a metaphor for accessibility and openness.
Completed in September 2007, the $22.5 million building provides 75,000 square feet of academic, social and research spaces and a 340-seat auditorium. These spaces are brought together around a three-storey atrium that becomes the new social and communal heart of the school.
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