Renderings: Leers Weinzapfel Associates
For more than three decades, the 18,650 sf Davis Center at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, has been the physical, intellectual, and programmatic heart of campus-wide efforts to build inclusive community on Williams’ campus. Leers Weinzapfel Associates, in collaboration with J. Garland Enterprises, is expanding the Center to 26,350 sf with a major new addition as well comprehensive renovations of the adjacent Rice and Jenness Houses. The resulting facility will feature universal access and increased space to accommodate Minority Coalition (MinCo) student gatherings, meetings, dialogue, classes, socializing, studying, and programming.
The new and renovated Center will welcome everyone, with a particular focus on those from historically underrepresented identities. With modernized space built for current and future needs, the building will be a dynamic and effective hub for the education, activism, community building, academic exploration, well-being, and celebration that happens within. It will provide the space for student affinity groups to collaborate and convene in furtherance of a more inclusive Williams.
The new addition reflects the domestic scale of the neighboring Rice and Jenness Houses with an open, glazed ground floor that acts as an invitation to broad campus engagement. A dynamic roofscape references the peaks and valleys of the mountain ranges that surround the college. The Center will house a new large gathering and event space to host the wide range of Davis Center programs, student group meeting spaces at a variety of sizes, staff office space to accommodate program growth, and improved kitchens for cultural and student group use. Beyond the program itself, the college sought spaces that were connected instead of siloed in separate buildings, that emphasized both physical and cultural access, and that reflected the mission of the Center.
Renderings: Leers Weinzapfel Associates
Pursuing Living Building Challenge Petal Certification, the Davis Center creates a bold and vivid expression of Williams’ commitment to cultivating a community that is socially just, culturally rich, and ecologically restorative. Completion is expected in Fall 2023.
About Leers Weinzapfel Associates
Recipient of the 2007 American Institute of Architects Firm Award, the firm is a national innovator in campus planning and academic design. Its timber John W. Olver Design Building, University of Massachusetts Amherst, was recognized by the Wall Street Journal in Best of Architecture 2017 and received a 2020 AIA COTE Award. Its more recent Adohi Hall, University of Arkansas, the largest timber structure in America upon completion, received the 2020 World Architecture News Awards Gold Medal: Wood in Architecture and the 2021 AIA Housing Award.
The practice’s work lies at the intersection of architecture, urban design, and infrastructure. Recognized for its inventiveness in dramatically complex commissions, it meets these challenges with uncommon design clarity, elegance, and refinement. Widely acknowledged with more than 100 significant global, national, and regional awards, the firm’s projects have been published worldwide and exhibited nationwide. Recent academic projects include the Harvard University District Energy Facility and, under construction, the MIT Metropolitan Warehouse (School of Architecture & Planning) with Diller, Scofidio, & Renfro. Follow the firm on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Vimeo.
