Georgia Tech’s John Lewis Student Center and Stamps Commons transformed an inward-facing student center and surrounding site into an accessible, transparent, outwardly oriented integration of architecture and landscape that encourages student engagement and creates a campus life environment where students can restore, reset, and refuel.
Beginning as a design-build competition, multidisciplinary teams and construction managers were challenged to develop a plan reimagining the Student Center and the adjacent landscape, while incorporating campus-wide goals for reduction of stormwater discharge and increased tree canopy coverage and biomass.
Through campus engagement sessions with students, faculty, alumni and staff, the design team determined that the typical programmatic requirements for a large campus student center could be better served by dividing the existing and proposed campus center program into four unique buildings: the John Lewis Student Center, the Pavilion, the Cafe, and the Exhibition Hall. These four structures were carefully sited across an underutilized twelve-acre campus sector creating an ‘Experiential Path’, a new campus pedestrian connective corridor. With one bold gesture, the programmatic center of student life at Georgia Tech was transformed into an integrated and continuously accessible indoor/outdoor experience centered around Student and Campus Life.
The Experiential Path creates new campus spaces that enhance student life by integrating the passive programs typically housed within large student centers into the landscape. Native habitats define outdoor rooms that offer students, faculty, and staff places for respite and quiet seclusion, while remaining connected to the broader campus. Along with amenities such a café with study areas, the Pavilion houses Student Health facilities, providing students with a more discreet and private setting away from the active Student Center. Fully accessible and designed for serendipitous encounters, the Path extends and strengthens campus connectivity while reinforcing the campus core by linking the Student Center to key destinations of the iconic Campanile and Tech Green.
