WPI Unity Hall

This hilltop campus overlooking the city of Worcester has its roots in a formal order of quadrangles and pathways originally laid out by Calvert Vaux. Paired with these processional sequences is a traditional New England landscape of evergreens, mature shade trees, rolling groundcover and expanses of green lawn. The ungated campus is also uninterrupted by public roads, contributing to its strong bucolic character.

As the campus has grown, housing and other ancillary buildings were sited below the hill and on campus edges that pushed outwards, which diluted the strong clarity of its initial campus organization.

This new student activity building offers an opportunity to mediate and integrate the upper academic and lower residential campus realms. Located in direct proximity to the library, it is also a significant campus aggregator. Similarly, the landscape composition plays off the established background plant palette, with smaller-scale outdoor rooms and experiences to draw in pedestrians. Overlooks, quiet courtyards, and intimate gardens traverse a 60-foot grade change, and materials are more finely detailed to add texture and variety. To stabilize steep slopes and control stormwater runoff, traditional New England stone walls are married with planted berms.

The building program is stacked with robotics labs on the lower levels, sandwiched by faculty offices on the mid-levels and student activities and meeting spaces on the upper levels. Fine grained walls and paving create a quiet approach to the entrances. At the uppermost level, an open plaza offers sweeping views of the campus, the city of Worcester, and the rolling seven hills which surround it.