North Campus Residential Expansion | Cornell University -- Ithaca, New York

776,000 SF | residences | dining for 1,000 | social lounges | classrooms | offices | community kitchen

The North Campus Residential Expansion (NCRE) at Cornell University is a 776,000-square-foot student life residential complex for first-year students and sophomores, providing over 2,000 beds on two separate sites on Cornell’s North Campus. The residences are organized as 3- to 5-story courtyard buildings, arranged to engage and respond to the adjacent campus, to respond to existing site conditions, and to help foster the variety of interstitial and serendipitous collegial exchanges crucial to student life. Central to this organization is a 1,000-seat dining hall that offers a variety of micro-restaurants to enhance the student life experience. Red and grey terracotta masonry walls with punched windows complement the neighboring north campus buildings by acting as modern re-interpretations of the existing dorms, while upper-level residential lounges—located at building ends and corners—are wrapped in a curtainwall to capture campus views and serve as beacons; a highly transparent ground floor promotes outward social interaction with the entire community.