Middlebury, VT
82,400 SF
Classrooms, social spaces, faculty offices, winter garden

[+] Starr-Axinn wins SCUP Award.

The design for Middlebury College’s Axinn Center at Starr Library reinvents a beloved campus landmark, meets the need for additional classrooms and faculty offices, brings disparate departments together for increased interdisciplinary collaboration, and redefines the Center of an expanding campus.

Located on the historic Old Stone Row quad, the project preserved the original 1927 neoclassical Starr Library, the 1957 Shepley Pavilion Reading Room, and added 50,000 SF of new space. Previous additions, which engulfed the original library, were deconstructed and reclaimed elements of the additions were used in the construction of the new project. The program called for the historic reading rooms in the library to be restored and other existing spaces to be adapted as classrooms and a 65-seat screening room. Two new symmetrical wings, designed to reference the style and character of the college’s original Old Stone Row buildings, provide offices for the History, Film and Media Culture, and the English and American Literatures departments. The new space accommodates faculty offices, technologically “smart” classrooms, a 45-seat tiered classroom, 2-story film production and editing studios. A light-filled winter garden which overlooks a sustainable landscaped, south-facing courtyard, connects all of these dynamic program elements and is the major horizontal circulation for the project.