Active Projects

Overview

The following page and its subpages offer information and updates about many of our current projects that are in the active planning and design stage of implementation. This is by no means a comprehensive list of all buildings currently in need of attention or undergoing improvements, renewal, or new construction. Additional projects and pages will be added to this section as updates and information are available.

Center for Multidisciplinary Study

The multidisciplinary programs function, in many ways, like academic departments—they offer courses, majors, and correlate sequences (“minors”); sponsor lectures and conferences; and launch campus-wide initiatives; they have their own administrative support staff, student interns and assistants; several are supported by endowed funds. In other ways, however, programs function very differently from academic departments, especially with regard to faculty appointments. With a few exceptions, faculty participate in the programs on a time-limited basis, coming from and returning to “home departments.” Any given program draws faculty from a broad range of departments, across all of the academic divisions. With a few exceptions, faculty who participate in the programs maintain their offices in the buildings that house their home departments.

An exterior rendering of the new home for the Center for Multidisciplinary Studies in Baldwin

A shared campus building provides a key form of stability for the multidisciplinary programs in the absence of other customary forms of support, such as dedicated faculty and stable staffing. In the past, a dedicated space—New England Building—significantly contributed to the vibrancy of the programs. Yet there is agreement among directors, staff and students that a new center could go further in expressing and supporting the programs’ academic life and teaching needs, not merely administrative work, in the life of the college. At a practical level, the multidisciplinary programs provide faculty from many departments opportunities to engage with others who share their questions and interests. The programs facilitate cross-departmental collaboration; they also serve as the sole institutional framework at Vassar College for modes of inquiry that might take the form of academic departments at other institutions.

Planning is currently underway for establishing a new permanent home for a Center for Multidisciplinary Study, located in Baldwin. This will be a two-stage process. In the first stage, the second and third floors (along with some outside areas) will be renovated to serve as a new home for offices, shared learning spaces, and administrative functions. Once Health Services is relocated to its new permanent home, a second stage of the process will convert the remaining space on the first floor to include additional programming, office, and support space.

The first stage is currently underway and will include the development of a full program for the entirety of the new home for the Center for Multidisciplinary Study. This will ensure that the final result is an enduring and cohesive contribution to the campus.

Current exterior of Pratt House

Pratt House & the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life and Contemplative Practices (ORSLCP)

Since the earliest years of the College’s founding, the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life and Contemplative Practices has been physically located in the chapel, a beautiful, looming, stone church. As the college has expanded and become more diverse, we’ve made more spaces available to students for religious and contemplative purposes: the Library Quiet Room, the Bayit, and the Muslim prayer space. Many wonderful things have happened in these spaces. But because they are all designed with specific religious and spiritual communities in mind, they have limited the ORSLCP to be a resource to all students who are seeking meaning, community, and ways to explore what it means to be human.

The renovation of Pratt House has created an opportunity to create a space that brings together religious and spiritual communities to continue to nurture their particular communities, while also providing flexible communal space for meals, dance parties, discussions and contemplative practices, open to all. This model provides opportunities for a vibrant exchange between the “neighborhoods” of particular communities and the “commons” where all meet and intersect.

Specific programmatic elements of the renovated Pratt House will include indoor and outdoor areas for gatherings and ceremonies, communal cooking and dining spaces, meditation and worship rooms, and an outdoor garden and labyrinth. Ultimately, the project has been guided by the general design principles of deep hospitality across secular and religious traditions and connection to the environment

An initial design charrette with stakeholders to envision the future of Pratt House and the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life and Contemplative Practice

An early sketch of one possible approach to the site for the Admission and Career Education Building in North Lot

Admission and Career Education Center

The Office of Admission and the Office of Career Education have outgrown their current spaces and locations which poses a number of challenges for both current members of the campus community and outside visitors. To address these challenges, Vassar has begun the design process for a new building for Admission and Career Education near the tennis courts and Collegeview Avenue. The College has contracted with Maryann Thompson Architects (MTA) to design the new facility and surrounding space. We are now in the process of refining the building scope to ensure the needs of the entire campus community are met. Please consider sharing your thoughts on the possible facility in our ongoing survey of campus.

More information about the project, including an ongoing survey from our design team, is available on this dedicated page about the project.

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