Designing and defining Diana

Of all the animals in the urban jungle, Barnard’s newest building is a chameleon.

Housing a cross-section of the college’s community, academic, and artistic endeavors, the many-faced Diana center is static in neither purpose nor in design, thanks to a continuing conversation based on student feedback.

Renowned architects Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi, who began the project in 2003, sat down to discuss their vision of the Diana Center as a callback to Barnard’s beginnings and a guiding force into its desired future.

“Barnard is a contemporary institution and we wanted to reflect that in this building,” Manfredi said. “The challenge was how to do that but still understand that we’re in a beautiful and very unique context.” Facing both the Classical facade of Columbia and the idiosyncratic mix of buildings at Barnard, “unique” doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface.

A work in progress
Gliding in and around the Diana’s seven levels, Weiss and Manfredi navigated each turn—and each architectural decision—with the expected amount of grace and ease. But, every now and then, they came to a screeching halt, pointing to a stray sticker on a glass window or a doorknob installed upside down, and sighed, “Punch list.”

As Weiss explained, the punch list is “a formal book that comes at the very end of the project” that lists everything from paint that needs to be fixed to mechanical problems with the building. Though the duo is still working to present the best Diana to Barnard’s students, the task is largely dependent upon student thoughts and opinions.

“Even though it’s open, the building isn’t done because we’re getting a lot of feedback,” Weiss said. “One of the things, for example, was that we put an area rug on the second floor and that was popular so we’re going to put more on higher floors.”

Barnard’s Vice President of Administration and Capital Planning Lisa Gamsu said that there are mechanisms in place for student feedback beyond SGA and the College Activities Office. “We’ve also been watching behaviors,” Gamsu said. “I even just go into the building and talk to students while I’m picking up garbage and doing other things.”

For the lounges, the intention was to let students decide how spaces are used. “We only bought like 75 percent of what we thought we would need to see what was successful and what was not,” Gamsu said of the furnishings.

The conversation over the building has surely not just begun, though—the Diana’s black box theater, for one, was born out of meetings in Barnard Hall with the architects to comment on the building’s original plans.

“There was a huge demand for a black box here—there is a great talent pool and a great lack of facilities to support that,” Weiss said of the new performing space, which opens up an approximately 100-person venue as lobbied for by groups like CUPAL.

This vision for the Diana as a diorama for the arts evolved out of such concerns. “At one point it was just going to be a library and an event space,” Weiss said.

Manfredi added, “That’s what Barnard thought they needed.”

True colors
The Diana’s etched glass exterior eschews definite descriptors. On a wintery day, it is a sheen copper. Bathed in sunlight, it is a vibrant terra cotta.

“We thought that the building should have this changing, slightly magical quality to it,” Manfredi said of the building’s soft matte face, which, in alternation with clear glass panels, seems to mimic the color and texture of brick.

“We had been intrigued with something that’s very contemporary and forward looking—which is glass,” Weiss said, describing how they tried to “think about it in a way that didn’t try to deny its presence.” They did not want to create a completely transparent building, but were instead interested in exploring the surface qualities of glass through the color treatment.

But this ever-shifting orange isn’t the only color on display at the Diana—the student center is also helping turn Barnard green.

The Diana is on track to become LEED-Silver, in accordance with the LEED Green Building Rating System, a set of standards for environmentally-friendly design. It accomplishes this with its environmentally sound roof and energy-efficient heating and cooling systems.

Gamsu said that this focus on sustainability has been a priority every step of the way—not just for environmental concerns, but for educational purposes. The green roof will be home to not just a lawn for lounging, but also a program to test different types of plant materials and how they hold up. “It’s really an outdoor classroom in a way,” Manfredi said.

“All the issues of the sustainable research that the school is interested in doing are literally on display,” Weiss said. “There’s no clear division between research and recreation.”

Back to the future
Before Lehman Lawn was introduced to construction tape and bulldozers, it was cozy with the old occupant of the Diana’s site—the McIntosh Center. The student center was notable for its Brutalist inspiration and the solid concrete wall it placed between Barnard and Broadway.

As Weiss explained, the building reflected the sentiment “that the city was one very different zone from a school and that a college needed to have maybe a fortress-like protection—a boundary between what the city was and what was inside the campus.”

In contrast, the Diana seeks to use “architecture to develop a series of links between groups and departments that are typically bifurcated” and between the college and the city, Manfredi said.

The idea, then, was to carve a window-lined diagonal atrium through the building to unite the core of the building with the upper levels, and turn the Diana’s potential identity crisis into a device for interdepartmental conversation—a return, of sorts, to the days when Milbank Hall housed all of Barnard’s programs.

And looking on to the Diana as the night grew dark and the building began to buzz with undergraduate energy, Weiss described the purpose of prioritizing connections and openness in the structure: “An academic education is all about off-hand encounters.”