New York University’s (NYU’s) John A. Paulson Center is a new multi-purpose campus building aligned with the university’s Climate Action Plan, aiming to be one of the greenest urban campuses in the U.S.
Located in Greenwich Village, the Paulson Center replaces the outdated, one-story Coles Sports and Recreation Center. It serves as a gateway between NYC and the university.
The building sets a new paradigm for multi-use facilities at NYU, containing an athletic complex, classrooms, study spaces, theatrical and musical performance spaces, first-year student and faculty residential towers, and a new commons area. The building embodies the spirit of the university and fosters fresh ways to learn, connect, work, play, and live.
Designed jointly by architecture firms, Davis Brody Bond and KieranTimberlake, in support of the NYU Climate Action Plan, the 68,000-m2 (735,000-sf) project’s sustainable design strategies reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water consumption, and the amount of waste generated during construction and operations.
As part of NYU’s plans for carbon neutrality by 2040, the team incorporated several energy efficient strategies and systems:
- Expanding the co-generation (CoGen) plant, NYU’s natural-gas-fueled power plant. It reduces energy use and carbon while providing efficient heating and cooling to the building.
- Using waste heat from the CoGen plant for building dehumidification. This also reduces the plant’s potable water consumption, where waste heat would otherwise be discarded through cooling towers.
- Creating a thermal buffer to enhance comfortable circulation spaces on the building’s perimeter, with climate-controlled spaces situated further in the building’s interior.
- Designing a custom frit pattern with 50 percent more density to reduce the amount of solar radiation entering the south and southwest facades.
- Assessing the embodied carbon footprint, using KieranTimberlake’s proprietary software, which allowed the design team to make any appropriate adjustments.
- Reducing construction lifecycle impacts by collecting demolition and construction waste for recycling.
Fritted glass, a patterned glass with a ceramic frit applied to clear glass, helps reduce bird collisions and provides clear visibility into the building’s perimeter areas. To enhance bird safety, the glass has a denser frit design on outside corners, lower building levels, and areas near green roofs.
The approach for bird protection were informed by expert insights from the American Bird Conservancy and the Bird-Safe Building Alliance. In addition, the building’s exterior lighting is designed to illuminate the street and sidewalks, while minimizing disruption to bird migratory patterns by directing the light downward instead of outward.
Approximately 2,300 m2 (25,000 sf) of green roofs reduce stormwater runoff and minimize the urban heat island effect while improving views, providing outdoor space, and promoting urban biodiversity.
In addition to an efficient filtration system, the John A. Paulson Center utilizes many design features and processes to ensure the highest air quality possible:
- Implementing stringent processes for maintaining indoor air quality throughout construction.
- Specifying low emitting materials throughout the building including furniture, cabinetry, and most of the paints, carpets, glues, and ceiling materials.
- Conducting air quality assessment and remediating any issues to maximize indoor air quality.
- GreenCleaning, a rigorous protocol for building maintenance that emphasizes air quality.
Each of the spaces in The John A. Paulson Center are constructed with an appropriate structural system. The five-story performing arts podium anchors the building to its site, an entire city block where the Jerome S. Coles Sports Center was formerly located.
The steel-framed structure features double walls, floating floors, and specially detailed dropped ceilings to acoustically isolate the venues from noise and vibration. Upper floors hang from a fifth-floor transfer truss at the south end of the building, which allows for a column-free, two-story entrance lobby on Bleecker Street.
Two below-grade levels provide space for athletic facilities that include four basketball courts and a six-lane pool. Four steel trusses span over the courts to create an open space large enough for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) regulation play. The perimeter walls and cellar slab were designed as a waterproofed “bathtub,” with caissons drilled into underlying bedrock to support the building above.
An 18-story faculty housing tower springs from the south end of the podium, while a 13-story dormitory block sits atop the podium’s midsection. The residential structures are framed with conventional structural steel and the girder-slab floor systems which combines proprietary steel shapes with precast concrete plank. The system allowed for speedy erection, reduces dead load, and minimizes construction depth.
Acoustic isolators between the foundation and the steel framing of the southern two-thirds of the structure attenuate vibrations and noise generated by an adjacent subway tunnel.
