Archinect - News

Cooper Robertson unveils campus master plan for the University of Maryland

2024-01-10T13:54:00-05:00

Details of a new comprehensive master plan by Cooper Robertson for the University of Maryland’s flagship campus in College Park were revealed Tuesday by the firm following its initial announcement in March of last year.

By prioritizing strategies for “holistic growth,” the university says it will be able to meet its slate of strategic development goals that include increasing institutional resilience, achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2025, improving transit options and pedestrian access on campus, making facilities improvements, enhancing connectivity between the campus and D.C. metro region, and preparing for a more diverse future.

Rendering courtesy Cooper Robertson

“This plan builds on the University of Maryland’s role as an ambitious, forward-looking, and value-driven academic institution,” Cooper Robertson partner and UMD alum Mike Aziz said. “By embracing its legacy of distinction in a modern and strategic program, the university is setting a highly sustainable and lasti...

Explore photos of OMA and Cooper Robertson's newly opened Buffalo AKG Art Museum expansion

2023-06-23T13:58:00-04:00

OMA has shared photos of the newly-reopened Buffalo AKG ARt Museum (formerly the Albright-Knox Gallery) following a special ribbon-cutting ceremony that was held on June 12 in Buffalo, New York.

The culmination of more than three years of construction yielded the renovation of two existing structures and the addition of a new glass-canopied Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building and Ralph Wilson Town Square designed by Shohei Shigematsu in collaboration with Cooper Robertson.

The Buffalo AKG campus looking east along Elmwood Avenue. Image © Marco Cappelletti.

Overall, the renovations add an additional 50,000-square-feet of exhibition space, five studio classrooms, a restaurant, and 350-seat auditorium. The project was funded by a $230 million capital campaign said to be the largest in the region’s history. New York’s Governor Kathy Hochul, who was born and raised in Buffalo, said "The new building and campus are a dramatic work of art that will attract visitors and support the regional touri...

Cooper Robertson will develop master plan for a campus expansion at the University of Maryland, College Park

2023-03-09T13:19:00-05:00

Cooper Robertson has been announced to lead the master planning for a campus facilities expansion at the University of Maryland’s flagship campus in College Park.

As part of their contract, the firm will deliver “flexible, data-driven, and inclusive comprehensive planning framework that will guide strategic growth and development” at the 1,340-acre campus. The project will target the development of currently-available land, while enhancing connectivity to the surrounding community and improving multi-modal transportation along sustainability lines and with several capital improvement projects integrated therein.

Cooper Robertson partner Mike Aziz says it helps the university retain its character as a “ambitious, forward-looking, and value-driven academic institution.”

Image courtesy University of Maryland, College Park

This is the second of a three-phase project which includes a draft development plan and will be followed by a final approval in June. The firm has also completed simi...

OMA and Cooper Robertson's Buffalo AKG Museum will officially reopen in May 2023

2022-11-24T12:00:00-05:00

An opening date has been set for the restored Buffalo AKG Art Museum following the announcement of the additional $20 million in funding to complete the three-year OMA and Cooper Robertson-led project.

Since Archinect's reporting of the museum's design was shared back in June 2018, the formerly named Albright-Knox Art Gallery will officially open its doors on May 25, 2023. New York State Governor Kathy Hochul signed off on the remaining monies made necessary by pandemic-related overruns to what she called a “transformative project that will provide a significant boost to Buffalo’s future.”

When it opens, visitors will be enthralled by Shohei Shigematsu’s glass curtain design for the new Jeffrey E. Gundlach building that connects via a transparent pedestrian bridge to the refurbished 117-year-old Elisabeth Wilmers Building, designed in the neoclassical style by influential local architect...

Cooper Robertson tapped to lead major downtown Utica redevelopment project

2022-01-19T16:55:00-05:00

An important but underutilized piece of the cultural fabric of Upstate New York is getting a makeover thanks to a new master plan for Utica’s Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute from Cooper Robertson.

The 103-year-old institute’s campus features a Pratt-affiliated school, performance center, and centerpiece International Style art museum designed by Philip Johnson in 1960. The master plan will address space issues within the existing campus buildings in addition to authoring changes that will aid the institute in its expanded effort to offer itself to the surrounding community as an enhanced public resource.

"This project will be about making the entire Munson-Williams environment into a more welcoming destination,” Cooper Robertson's Mike Aziz said in a statement. “We see so many opportunities for the campus to open up, embrace a broader community, and strengthen its role as an anchor for the neighborhood, the city, and the region.”

The project will also include the constructi...

Construction begins on Adjaye Associates and Cooper Robertson's Princeton University Art Museum

2021-12-17T12:58:00-05:00

Construction has commenced on a new home for the Princeton University Art Museum. Designed by Adjaye Associates, with Cooper Robertson serving as executive architects, the new scheme will be built on the site of the former museum building on the Princeton campus, doubling the museum’s area to 144,000 square feet.

Exterior view from Prospect Drive. Image: Adjaye Associates

The three-story art museum will be comprised internally of nine pavilions, which seek to “break down the scale of the complex into more intimate modules and allows for deeply varied gallery experiences.” The pavilions are linked by two “art walks” — thoroughfares that flow through the building as a circulatory spine.

Grand Stair. Image: Adjaye Associates

The building’s nine pavilions are paired by four public zones, comprising gathering spaces, event and education spaces, and a café, inviting the public inside while controlling access to the galleries on the upper floors. Four of the nine gallery pavilions featur...

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame picks PAU for $100 million expansion

2020-12-23T17:02:00-05:00

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland on Friday released designs for a $100 million renovation and expansion, which would grow the museum’s footprint by a third with a dramatic addition to the original I.M. Pei building. The Rock Hall announced that the architecture firm PAU will lead the project, which will bring 50,000 square feet of programming space and a new band shell overlooking the shores of Lake Erie.

Besides modernizing the Rock Hall's existing I.M. Pei museum building and infrastructure, the expansion project will also add 10,000 square feet for large-scale traveling exhibits, open space for event and education programming, creation of a museum campus with the neighboring science center, a lakefront gathering place for Cleveland residents and museum visitors, and interactive learning classrooms among other features.

Image courtesy of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU).

Commenting on the competition win, Vishaan Chakrabarti, Founder and Creative Director of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU), said: "Rock and Roll—like NASA and pizza—brings us together like few other cultural phenomena at this moment when our nation needs to come together. We are beyond ecstatic to have been selected by the Rock Hall to design the expansion of I.M.Pei’s heart of glass, which sits aglow upon Cleveland’s storied industrial waterfront, particularly in light of the architectural lu...

Jaquelin “Jaque" Taylor Robertson, co-founder of Cooper Robertson, has passed away

2020-05-14T13:39:00-04:00

Jaquelin “Jaque" Taylor Robertson, FAIA, a founding partner of architecture firm Cooper Robertson and the urban designer behind the master plan for Celebration, Florida, has passed away at age 87.

Aerial view of Celebration, Florida. Image by Robert Benson Photography.

A message from Cooper Robertson marking the architect's passing reads as follows:

Over the course of his long, fruitful and rich life, Jaque’s accomplishments were innumerable, extraordinary and widely varied. He had a staggering breadth of life experiences and a seemingly bottomless well of talents; always setting the bar high, holding to the highest of standards and accepting nothing short of excellence, first in himself, and in his partners and colleagues as well.

The Jaque we remember is that of a tall, dashingly handsome figure, in custom tailored suits from London, matching bow tie and pocket-square, with a winning smile and a twinkle in his electric blue eyes; a mirror to a soul that was fundamentally warm, lovi...

Sir David Adjaye to design new Princeton University Art Museum

2018-09-18T16:19:00-04:00

Princeton University has tapped Sir David Adjaye to build the school's new art museum. Done in collaboration with local firm Cooper Robertson, it will replace the current museum with a “dramatically enlarged space for the exhibition and study of the museum’s encyclopedic collections, special exhibitions and art conservation, as well as object-study classrooms and office space for the hundred person museum staff,” according to the school’s statement.

This is the latest major commission for the Ghanian-British architect who has completed a bunch of high profile projects for civic and cultural institutions over the years; most notably, the acclaimed Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. He is currently overseeing a number of museum designs including the new home for the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art in Riga.

Sir David Adjaye Photo by Ed Reeve.

Adjaye, who taught at Princeton's School of Architecture ...

Cooper Robertson tapped as executive architect for New Museum expansion

2018-01-25T18:36:00-05:00

Last year, the New Museum announced that Rem Koolhaas and Shoehei Shigematsu would be heading the institution's expansion that will nearly double their footprint in New York. The contemporary art museum has been situated at 235 Bowery in a building designed by the Japanese firm SANAA since 2007.

Shortly thereafter, the museum bought a neighboring six-story masonry building that has since housed their incubator programs. As part of the expansion, the museum plans to connect the two, adjacent structures while overhauling 251 Bowery for an additional 50,000 square feet of galleries, improved public circulation, and flexible space for the institution’s experimental programs.

In collaboration with the design architects at OMA New York, Cooper Robertson has been selected as the executive architects for the expansion. Spearheaded by partner Scott Newman, FAIA, and senior associate Andrew Barwick, RA, this commission is the latest in a long line of notable museum projects by the firm, whos...