The design and construction of the building will support and make evident the college’s commitment to sustainability and accessibility. The use of a mass timber structural system will reduce the embodied carbon in construction materials and will be a visible design feature. The building will be highly energy efficient and zero energy ready, connecting to Smith’s upcoming geothermal energy system upon its completion. Other sustainably built Smith College buildings are LEED gold certified Neilson Library and Bechtel Environmental Classroom, the fifth building in the world to be certified as a Living Building. The landscape surrounding Kathleen McCartney Hall is designed based on the principles established in the College’s landscape master plan and will provide universal access from Chapin Lane to College Lane. Groundbreaking is scheduled for March 2024 with building completion by fall 2025.
About Smith College:
Founded in 1871, Smith College opened in 1875 with 14 students. Today, it is one of the largest women’s liberal arts colleges in the United States, educating women of promise for lives of distinction and purpose. Smith enrolls more than 2,500 students from nearly every state and more than 65 other countries to cultivate leaders able to address the complex, urgent problems of today. As a global community of scholars, entrepreneurs, artists, scientists, activists and humanitarians, Smith is pushing the world forward. More information at smith.edu.
About Lazarus Center for Career Development:
Named for Shelly Lazarus ’68, Chairman Emerita of Ogilvy & Mather, the Lazarus Center for Career Development is committed to inclusive excellence in career education–integrating liberal arts learning with work-learning experiences and skills development from day one through graduation and beyond. The center has three focus areas: networks, career planning, and experiential learning.
About the Wurtele Center for Leadership:
The Wurtele Center for Leadership, named for arts advocate and author Margaret Wurtele ’67, embraces and advocates for a collaborative approach to leadership. The center designs workshops, programs, talks and other learning experiences to equip all members of the Smith community with the creativity, courage, and collaborative capacity to lead positive change at scales both large and small.
About TenBerke:
TenBerke is a New York-based architecture studio united by values. The practice is bound by the promise that architecture must build toward dignity and decency, that the truest measure of good design is the good that it does the world. And that it must be good in these ways: inspiringly, imaginatively, sustainably, responsibly, delightfully. TenBerke has worked on dozens of campus projects over the last 20 years with high ambitions for social and environmental sustainability, including buildings at Harvard, Yale, University of Arkansas, UPenn, University of Virginia, and SUNY Fredonia, among others. Since 2021, TenBerke has completed the adaptive reuse of a 1960s library stacks building into Harvard Lewis International Law Center; re-envisioned Princeton University’s campus social infrastructure with two new Residential Colleges, the firm’s most significant project to date; and opened the two hybrid-CLT Brook Street Residence Halls at Brown University this fall. TenBerke’s Princeton University Residential Colleges have been recognized with an AIA NY 2023 Design Award, a SCUP 2023 Excellence Award, a SARA NY 2023 Design Award, and a SARA National 2023 Design Award.