Designwire Daily: from the editors of Interior Design magazine

Gwathmey Siegel Completes Cleveland State University Student Center

by Nicholas Tamarin | Friday, September 3, 2010

Citizens of C-Town are seeing some of the most innovative architecture in the country now that Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects has wrapped up their work on the new student center at Cleveland State University.

The New York-based A&D firm’s new 138,000-square-foot facility in downtown Cleveland marks the start of the second phase of CSU’s master plan to reorient its campus. Dedicated to student activities, dining and food service, meeting space, and retail areas, the center was conceived as a public gateway between the university and the city.

GSAA went with a classic, functional palate of materials for the building to blend in with its surroundings on Euclid Avenue, the main commercial drag of downtown Cleveland. The facilities central block is covered in granite, flanking walls are clad in brick and windows are framed in aluminum.

Stunning sky bridges link the center to a surrounding academic building while lush lawns and a broad, sloping entryway front the building and lead to a just-completed rail stop, the final stage of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s Euclid Corridor Transportation Project and the key element that weaves the center into the urban fabric of a revitalized downtown Cleveland.

“We think of a student center as the ‘living room’ of a campus,” says GSAA principal Robert Siegel. GSAA Associate Partner and project architect Joe Ruocco adds, “Our interactions with the CSU staff, administrators, and student representatives was key to formulating our approach—and our dialogue with the local community really enriched the design.”

Images courtesy of Gwathmey Siegel Architects.