Title: Vanderbilt University E. Bronson Ingram College
Location of Proejct: Nashville, Tennessee
Project Completion Date: August 2018
Firm Name: David M. Schwarz Architects, Inc. and HASTINGS

Short Description: E. Bronson Ingram College creates a living-learning environment knit into the historic campus to advance Vanderbilt University’s mission to “enrich the educational experience by completing and extending the residential college system and developing new infrastructure to foster further interconnections between discovery and learning” (Vanderbilt University Strategic Plan, 2014).

Architect's Statement: Designed to blur the lines between living and learning environments, a faculty family resides alongside 330 sophomores, juniors, and seniors in a model of communal living rooted in the tradition of residential colleges at the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, and Yale University. The new E. Bronson Ingram College is seamlessly woven into the historic campus employing both Collegiate Gothic and Victorian Gothic architectural expressions in response to the scale of the surrounding buildings and implying the layered history of the campus. The Collegiate Gothic architecture, responding to the adjacent 1925 Alumni Hall, features a tower, nearly 100 feet in height, detailed with limestone, brick, and crab orchard stone. A portion of the building, accentuated by red brick and stone, is designed in the Victorian Gothic style relating to the University’s first and most iconic building, Kirkland Hall, which was completed in 1875 and is sited immediately to the south.

The eastern wing is constrained in its footprint, embracing a 100-year old Ginkgo tree. As the campus has served as an arboretum since 1879, trees are inextricably involved in the fabric of the campus. This tree commanded the footprint avoid its periphery resulting in a tighter third courtyard and a more vertical motif surrounding it. This limitation in plan also informed a change to the architectural expression of the façade and massing. It is here that the architecture relates closely to the historic Kirkland hall and employs a Victorian Gothic styling and assumes Kirkland's’ red-brick palette, conveying the notion of a later expansion to the original Collegiate Gothic structure.

In addition to responding adjacent landmark buildings, the masonry, stonework, and carpentry demonstrate a materiality, exactness of detailing and craftsmanship true to historic structures but rarely seen in this era. Artist-designed motifs were hand carved into the limestone and located throughout the College telling the story of the University and important scholars and researchers.

The residential college program assembles a variety of spaces in which students live, learn, and socialize with fellow students and educators alike. A vaulted dining room, great room, study lounges, private courtyards, and public patios provide space for casual encounters and structured communication all appointed with handcrafted millwork, paneling and architectural metals as well as carefully concealed high-performance, energy-efficient building automation and mechanical systems. A dance studio, music practice rooms, and art gallery further enhance the living-learning environment.

The heart of the College is a series of courtyards and arcades which – while maintaining the architectural style of the campus – create a sheltered space to support happenstance encounters and provide a protected space for reading and studying and support a system of pedestrian-friendly paths which knit E. Bronson Ingram into the campus and directly connecting the College to surrounding buildings.