Sometimes called “the Gothic Wonderland,” Duke University’s West Campus in Durham, North Carolina, is a storybook enclave. Designed by the office of Horace Trumbauer—under the direction of chief designer Julian Abele, one of the first influential African-American architects—and constructed between 1927 and 1932 (with the Olmsted Brothers overseeing the landscape), it is characterized by its bucolic quads and Collegiate Gothic architecture rendered in the local variegated Duke Stone. It is not a place that takes change lightly.
But, as one of the country’s most competitive universities, the school also knows the importance of staying current to attract the best students and is accustomed to adapting to the times, as it has with its recent reinvention of the historic West Campus Union building. Designed by the New York office of Grimshaw architects, the renovation and expansion transforms a creaky dining facility into a dynamic community center. “For us, there is an important relationship between the academic, residential, and social environments,” says Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs. “West Union is the nexus—where these three circles overlap.” The original building, completed in 1930 at the heart of the campus, was showing its age. The 200-foot-long Great Hall refectory and adjacent Cambridge Inn dining room may have been hallowed, but they were inflexible spaces, and much of the rest of the building was given over to grab-and-go food vendors and administrative offices. There was nowhere inviting to gather or linger. And it was impenetrable. “It was like a fortress,” says Mark Husser, Grimshaw’s partner in charge. “You couldn’t move through it.”
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