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The “Twenty first Century Campus” overhaul of the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) within the Higher Manhattan neighborhood of Morningside Heights has been accomplished, concluding an formidable and much-anticipated campus reimagining that began within the spring of 2017. Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects led the design of the transformative modernization venture, one which brings “new open, light-filled, interconnected, outward-facing structure that displays the community-oriented type of Judaism that JTS teaches and practices” to the establishment’s historic campus close to Columbia College. Per the 136-year-old instructional group, the design “will allow JTS to host its neighbors, metropolis, and broader group in a really Twenty first-century setting.”
The brand new and improved campus “displays JTS’s highest values of Jewish dwelling and studying, respect and dignity for all folks, group, accessibility, and environmental sustainability,” the establishment elaborated.
Involving each new development and the renovation of present buildings, the campus redevelopment venture was made potential by the proceeds from a 2016 land deal during which JTS bought a small parcel on the jap finish of its campus and roughly 260,000 sq. toes of air rights to developer Savanna for $96 million. Because of that deal, the Vandewater, a 33-story luxurious apartment tower that may declare bragging rights because the tallest constructing in Manhattan north of Central Park, now rises immediately adjoining to the JTS campus.
“Our new campus will facilitate a deeper collaboration with our neighbors, our metropolis, and with people and communities world wide,” stated former JTS chancellor Arnold Eisen in a 2016 assertion saying the deal. “It can present a number of new alternatives for dialogue round probably the most important problems with our time. That is the start of a brand new chapter in our lengthy historical past as a world class instructional establishment, devoted to coaching the leaders of tomorrow.”
Whereas the transfer initially prompted native pushback, the returns of the deal can now be loved by JTS together with these from the bigger group. Highlights of the reimagined campus embody a model new library (its predecessor was demolished) full with a public-facing exhibition house and a climate-controlled uncommon guide room containing JTS’s famously expansive assortment of uncommon Judaica; refreshed residence halls with new communal gathering areas and kosher kitchens; an upgraded 200-seat auditorium and efficiency house, and a multifaceted, undergraduate student-run Moadon (Hebrew for lounge) house, which is described in a venture reality sheet as being a “bathed in gentle and open to [the] open air” house the place college students can “meet, stage efficiency, dialogue, host occasions and hook up with all parts of the campus.”
Additionally new to the campus, which first opened for studying in 1929, is a versatile, sky-lit central atrium that spans 7,000 sq. toes and features as each a pure place for casual social gatherings and bigger, extra formal occasions akin to non secular companies, lectures, and extra.
Out of doors areas on the JTS campus have been additionally refreshed and reimagined by venture panorama architect Mathews Nielsen Panorama Architects (MNLA). Notable is a brand new backyard and courtyard house the place the JTS group can collect and dine open air when the climate permits; the out of doors house can be designed to accommodate JTS sukkah throughout Sukkot.
Improved campus accessibility, together with ADA-compliant dorm rooms and accessible loos and elevators, was integral to the venture as was the implementation of quite a few sustainable design options together with inexperienced roofs, high-efficiency lighting and HVAC techniques, and extra.
Becoming a member of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and MNLA on the bigger venture design staff have been structural engineer Robert Silman Associates and lighting designer Fisher Marantz Stone. Williams, Tsien, and associate Paul Schulhof have been the featured audio system in a March 13 panel dialogue, Area, Place, and Communities of Religion, that kicked off the “Opening Season” collection of open-to-the-public occasions celebrating the brand new campus.
Established in 1886, JTS describes itself as a preeminent establishment of Jewish larger schooling and serves because the “mental and religious middle” of Conservative Judaism. It comprises 5 faculties: the Albert A. Listing Faculty of Jewish Research, the Gershon Kekst Graduate College, the William Davidson Graduate College of Jewish Schooling, the H. L. Miller Cantorial College and Faculty of Jewish Music, and the Rabbinical College. In June 2020, Dr. Shuly Rubin Schwartz was appointed because the eighth Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and is first lady to serve that function within the historical past of the establishment.
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