PRATT OPENS NEW BUILDING ON MYRTLE AVENUE
New Myrtle Hall Demonstrates Commitment to Innovative Design, Environmental Sustainability, and Neighborhood Revitalization Effort
Top: The main entrance to Myrtle Hall; Bottom: Myrtle Hall facing Myrtle Avenue.
Pratt Institute opened its new six-story, 120,000-square-foot green academic and administrative building, a striking space that is expected to both serve as a physical manifestation of Pratt’s commitment to sustainable design education, and further promote the revitalization of Myrtle Avenue.
Called Myrtle Hall, the building at 536 Myrtle Avenue houses Pratt’s Department of Digital Arts and several administrative offices.
Designed by the New York City architecture firm WASA/Studio A, the new building is expected to meet the United States Green Building Council standards for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold certification based on its eco-features that include exterior sun shades; a green roof that absorbs rainwater, reflects heat, and sequesters greenhouse gasses; and solar photo-voltaic panels that generate on-site electricity. It will be the first higher education building project in Brooklyn to receive a LEED certification and the first academic building to receive a LEED Gold certification in Brooklyn.
Myrtle Hall Digital Arts Gallery In addition, Myrtle Hall will afford Pratt’s Digital Arts department the space and facilities necessary for its faculty and students to continue their cutting-edge design and research. The digital arts area includes state-of-the-art wired studios/classrooms, a digital resource center, animation labs, a recording studio, graduate studio spaces, and a prominent all-glass gallery in the atrium. The building will also soon allow for an incredible improvement to the Pratt student experience by consolidating all student services offices under one roof.
“This is a momentous occasion for Pratt as it demonstrates the Institute’s commitment to innovative design, environmental sustainability, the renewal of Myrtle Avenue, and most of all to its students,” said Pratt President Thomas F. Schutte, who also has been a driving force in the economic revitalization of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill for more than 10 years as chair of the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership.
“Myrtle Hall will move forward our academic program in digital arts and will tremendously improve Pratt’s services for students while serving as a point of pride for the campus community and our neighbors as the first green building in the Fort Greene/Clinton Hill area.”
Myrtle Hall's interior Design
The design of Myrtle Hall involves two site-specific wall types—a glass curtain wall and a paneled masonry wall—that maintain a contemporary look while relating to the surrounding mercantile brick structures on Myrtle Avenue. Connecting the two wall systems is a four-story atrium with views into and through the building from both sides. The atrium is the building’s most prominent feature and will serve as a second-floor gallery outside of the Office of Admissions to display alumni work, while the fourth-floor gallery will display the work of digital arts students and faculty. The atrium also serves as a symbolic gesture of transparency connecting Myrtle Avenue to the campus and illustrating Pratt’s openness to the community. Other prominent design features include a loft-like light-filled interior that is consistent with the industrial character of Pratt’s creative workspaces.
“Our building design is meant to explore the relationship between Pratt—a great New York institution—and the larger community within which it resides. The development of the two principal wall systems, tied together by the transparent central gathering space, is meant to be a metaphor for that relationship,” said the building’s design architect, Jack Esterson, AIA, who is partner-in-charge and lead designer of the Myrtle Hall building project and partner-in-charge of design at the architecture firm WASA/Studio A. “We hope that it fully expresses a positive relationship and the quality of design innovation that Pratt represents to its students, faculty, and staff, as well as to the city at large.”
Esterson is a 1975 graduate of Pratt’s School of Architecture and a long-time resident of Clinton Hill, where Pratt’s 25-acre Brooklyn campus is located. He has practiced architecture in New York City for 34 years and served as an adjunct instructor at Pratt, where he received an Alumni Achievement Award in 2000.
Myrtle Hall in the Community
Despite its location in a neighborhood of historic importance, Myrtle Avenue began to lose some of its energy in the early 1970s with the decommissioning of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the demolition of the elevated subway line, which contributed to the decline of the commercial strip. In recent years, it has begun to regain its vitality with Pratt as a major influence. The Institute first opened Prattstore, the college art supply and book store at Emerson Place, in 2005 on Myrtle Avenue driving thousands of students, faculty, and staff to the avenue. The new building will move 200 faculty and staff to Myrtle Avenue and will further promote foot traffic and business along the bustling strip.
Administrative offices at Pratt that will occupy the new space include the Pratt Center for Community Development, and the offices for Admissions, Bursar, Financial Aid, Human Resources, Institutional Advancement, International Student Affairs, and Registrar.
Myrtle Hall will provide the Office of Admissions with visually stunning space for visitors including much needed office space for advisement sessions, convenient parking for prospective students and families, and a large lecture hall for information sessions. The move of the three student services departments—Bursar, Financial Aid, and Registrar—to Myrtle Hall will dramatically improve service to Pratt’s 4,700 students by locating the three offices in one area.
On the Willoughby side of the new building is a landscaped park designed by Signe Nielsen, professor of architecture at Pratt and principal of Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects. The park provides an attractive and quiet public space. It features light-colored pavement that reflects sunlight to reduce the “heat-island” effect as well as native and drought-resistant plants that require only rainwater. The landscaping was designed to recall the main campus in order to give the complex a sense of continuity.
The building embodies Pratt’s commitment to innovate and demonstrates putting green design into practice. Several years ago, Pratt was one of the first colleges in New York to become a 2030 Challenge Partner and accept Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s challenge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2017. As a member of the Leadership Circle of the American College and University President’s Climate Commitment, Pratt reinforces its commitments to neutralize greenhouse gas emissions by accelerating educational efforts to re-stabilize the earth’s climate.
The Kresge Foundation awarded Pratt a $75,000 Green Planning Grant for the design of Myrtle Hall. Kresge’s Green Building Initiative, launched in 2003, supports non-profits to pursue sustainable or green building practices and encourages organizations to build green.
Photos: Alexander Severin/ RAZUMMEDIA
Gateway Editors
Reader Comments (12)
This is just wonderful! It's so nice to see a decent piece of architecture go into the old neighborhood. I'm hopeful that this inspirers a surge in making Pratt's buildings at/on campus a visual communication of the talent and innovation of the student body and faculty.
Congratulations to all involved. Again, Pratt stands out as a leader in green architecture. Great looking building. Makes Myrtle Ave come alive and unique. I can't wait to see the inside at the annual alumni day.
Congratulations to the Pratt Community for showing such a significant contribution to our neighborhood. As a former student/owner of a brownstone on Vanderbilt @ Myrtle, I remember the “El” and the neighborhood’s transition from Italian to Black/Hispanic. When you revitalize your home/neighborhood, you revitalize yourself.
Congratulation to Pratt. The building definitely enlights Myrtle Avenue.
I am a 2001 ID Pratt graduate. I am proud of Pratt for making a full commitment to the green movement.
The new building is great. Unfortunately, it's like it's CIA headquarters trying to get in out of that place.
Congratulations to Pratt, an Institution by which others will be judged. We who have passed through Pratt are very proud to be of it's commitment and dedication to education and the upliftment of the community.
As a 1953 Graduate I have always been proud of my college, Pratt Institute as it was originally called when I attended.
Now with this new building I am excited and overwhelmed with it's design, size and location. How wonderful for all involved, designers, builders,students and faculty. How really lucky we all are to be associated with Pratt.
The new building is great, but try doing something about Willoughby Hall. It's like where most students live!
Who did the artwork that is pictured in the gallery shot? I am curious as to who the artist is.