Milstein Hall Cornell University

Occupying four distinct buildings at the northern periphery of Cornell's Arts Quad, the College for Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP) was a fragmented area, dislocated from the energy of university life. The new Milstein Hall - a 14,000 square-meter complex containing much-needed studio, exhibition and crit space, an auditorium and a new Fine Arts Library - is conceived not as a symbolic, isolated addition to the campus but as a connecting structure: a large elevated horizontal plate that links the second levels of Sibley and Rand Halls and cantilevers over University Avenue, reaching towards the Foundry building. Where a car park once stood between Sibley and Rand, a contiguous, multi-layer system of buildings and plazas unites the disparate elements of the AAP, creating a public space adjacent to the campus's most beautiful feature, just to the north - the Fall Creek Gorge.