Dive Brief:

• The New School in New York City has always made a point of being different, and its new, 16-story University Center in Manhattan embraces the idea by aiming to be a vertical college campus.
• Skidmore, Owings and Merrill designed the building to have a series of "sky quads" where people cross paths and stairways designed to promote meeting people and conversing.
• The building includes nine floors of dormitory space, classrooms, cafes, a performance hall, labs and other features found on any college campus – but usually next to each other rather above or below each other.

Dive Insight:

The whole center is 375,000 square feet divided between what is called the campus center in the first seven stories and 130,000 square feet of residential space above that. The building's elevator system system is designed to shift during class-change times to skip stops and encourage walking from the floors where the doors do open.