TenBerke, formerly Deborah Berke Partners, has completed what the firm calls its “most ambitious completed work to date.” The 485,000-square-foot project comprises two new residential colleges at Princeton University, each serving 510 students.

The taller building, named New College West, features soft-grey metal ‘treehouses’ inspired by its woodland setting. Meanwhile, the smaller Yeh College building is described by the team as “low-slung by outward-looking.” Both buildings feature a mixture of warm grey calcium silicate brick to create a “contemporary interpretation of historic masonry on the campus.”

The ground floor of the buildings sees wood-formed precast concrete blended with extensive glazing framed in warm white oak. Inside, public and social activities are concentrated on the ground floor, seeking to depart from what the team calls the campus’ “traditionally hermetic, inward-looking architecture.”

Inside, the colleges swap traditional university emblems for a more modern approach to art and iconography. Bright hand-painted splashes of color, inhabitable sculptural installations, and prisms that refract color all feature across the interiors, as do “eclectic furnishings with lively fabrics.” The inclusion of bold color palettes in a largely calm environment intends to create moments of whimsy and humor, creating a sense of discovery for inhabitants.

“We didn’t start out by thinking about how to build a residential project, but about how we could reconfigure the relationship between indoors and outdoors,” TenBerke principal Arthi Krishnamoorthy explained. “From top to toe, we worked out every possible layer of design — from planning the 11-acre site to the architecture of the residence halls, down to the furnishings and the messages.”

“What tied it all together was designing the student experience, from the approach to the college to the room units themselves,” Krishnamoorthy added. “There’s a buzz in the hallways, now, everywhere you go, and a real sense of happening.”

The scheme is one of several prominent university projects delivered by Ten Berke, with other recent examples including an adaptive reuse project for Harvard Law School and an all-electric residential hall at Brown University.