School's Redesign Means Real Life Experience for Business Students
NEW YORK, July 18, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — HLW is pleased to announce that the May/June edition of Markets Media featured their design of Hughes Hall, the new home of Fordham University's Gabelli School of Business. The gut renovation of this historic building has transformed Fordham's undergraduate business school into a contemporary business environment. HLW's goal for the building is to function as a modern corporate office, giving students real life experience, as well as access to the latest learning technologies, dynamic special event spaces and a variety of options for collaborating.
Completed in August 2012, the new business school represents a dramatic shift in uses. The new building retains its French gothic facade, built in 1891, while incorporating modern technologies. HLW's contemporary design elements are married with the original stonework including abundant use of glass, the integration of technology and a midcentury modernist sensitivity to clean simplicity, open spaces, organic hues and textured materials.
HLW won the bid to design the new business school in part because of the firm's expertise in designing both educational and financial services environments. The majority of rooms include transparent material, consistent with the current architectural trend for corporate facilities to physically portray institutional transparency. However, the glass-enclosed trading room is unique. Features include Bloomberg terminals, streaming stock tickers, and a video wall that can be programmed to track how the Student Managed Investment Fund is performing. The trading room walls also feature a smart film that can transform from clear glass to digital images for privacy. These architectural and technological elements achieve the goal of creating a real world business environment for Fordham's students.
"It was a gutsy direction to take with the new building, but one entirely in line with Fordham's long tradition of applied learning and nurturing the well-rounded, independent thinker," said Dean Donna Rapaccioli, Ph.D., of the Gabelli School of Business. "A Jesuit education emphasizes being attentive to experience, followed by reflection and analysis, and ultimately thoughtful action." Hughes Hall also houses the Center for Global Studies, which is fitting for a business school that aims to cultivate an inclusive, international perspective on the marketplace. The Fordham administration says "to reach the top echelon of the business world, a person needs to know more than business itself."
"There was a meeting of the minds between HLW and Fordham," said Jennifer Brayer, partner at HLW. If you are going to define innovation in today's workplace as taking a progressive idea and making it replicable, applicable and ultimately valuable in a totally different situation, then a successful design solution is about creating spaces that spur that kind of innovation. Hughes Hall uses the same technologies being embraced by forward-thinking companies who perceive technology as a natural extension of their ability to communicate ideas and collaborate."
To read the article about HLW's dynamic renovation of Hughes Hall in Markets Media, click HERE.
About HLW International, LLP
Sustaining a successful practice for over 128 years, HLW International provides comprehensive architecture, planning, interior design, and engineering services on many high-profile projects located throughout the United States and around the world. HLW maintains a global presence with offices in New York City, Los Angeles, London, and Shanghai. The firm designs buildings and interior places for a diverse portfolio of clients ranging from broadcast and media, financial corporations, technology companies, academic institutions, and multi-family and mixed-use buildings.
About Fordham University
Founded in 1841, Fordham is the Jesuit University of New York, offering exceptional education distinguished by the Jesuit tradition to more than 15,100 students in its four undergraduate colleges and its six graduate and professional schools. It has residential campuses in the Bronx and Manhattan, a campus in West Harrison, N.Y., the Louis Calder Center Biological Field Station in Armonk, N.Y., and the London Centre at Heythrop College, University of London, in the United Kingdom.
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