Bard College is a liberal arts college with approximately nineteen hundred students. Located in the Hudson Valley, its rural campus occupies a former agrarian landscape on the banks of the Hudson River.

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The new student residences are arranged on the site to create a controlled, residential quadrangle with views into the surrounding landscape. This is achieved by creating separate buildings with fluid spatial conditions between them. In addition, the corners of the new quadrangle are left open as the curving site plan blurs the distinction between the natural and built parts of the campus.

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As a result of our discussions with college administrators and students, we designed autonomous and intimately scaled dormitories to house twenty students each. These are organized to create a more comfortable, individualized and socially cohesive group than is possible with traditional dormitories.

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The light-filled ground floor social area contains a shared living space, study and kitchen. These are adjacent to the building entry and face onto the quadrangle. At the front of the building, a generous wooden bench encourages informal gatherings and modulates between the scale of the quadrangle and the entry vestibule.

The stair hall is designed as the vertical complement to the ground floor social space. It is the most transparent part of the building and allows views of the landscape, while giving glimpses into adjacent stair halls and corridors.

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For more information, see The Ravines at Bard College.