The John A. Paulson Center, designed by Davis Brody Bond and Kieran­Timberlake, is hard to miss. The 735,000-square-foot structure is the latest addition to New York University’s Washington Square Park–area campus in Manhattan, and commands a block-long site at the border of the SoHo and Greenwich Village historic districts.

It replaces the Coles Sports and Recreation Center, a squat, one-story concrete structure built in 1981. The project’s goals were to consolidate previously dispersed school programs in a single location and create much-needed student and faculty housing, along with classrooms, state-of-the-art athletic facilities, and performance spaces, including three theaters and a music-recital hall.