Passive and active strategies for tempering the indoor environment come together in Tulane University’s new student building. The Lavin-Bernick Center was designed by Vincent James Associates Architects (VJAA) and completed in 2007, just 14 months after Hurricane Katrina.
Winner of an AIA architecture award, the center’s shading systems, day lighting strategies and low energy design combine to produce a building with a comfortable environment all year round.
Architects at VJAA retained a previous campus center constructed in 1954, stripping it back to its concrete foundations and adding 36,000 square feet. The new building is substantially different from its predecessor, which was inward-looking, compartmentalized and artificially cooled 100 percent of the time.