An award-winning architect with a penchant for Japanese modernism now has a big say in what Penn's campus will look like in the next few years.
Maki and Associates -- architect Fumihiko Maki's Tokyo-based design firm -- will plan the new Annenberg Public Policy Center at 36th and Locust streets, Penn President Amy Gutmann announced yesterday during a day of meetings of the University Board of Trustees.
Maki came to Penn from Japan to present his plans for the new building to the trustees' Facilities and Campus Planning Committee. His minimalist design for the center -- which will be built in the space currently occupied by the old Hillel building on South 36th Street -- will have a "transformative impact" on Penn's campus, Gutmann said.
The Facilities and Campus Planning Committee is one of 11 official trustee groups that meet three times annually.
Ten of those committees and two ad hoc committees convened yesterday at the Inn at Penn for debates about specific University policy changes. The full 55 trustees will gather this morning for the stated meeting of the trustees, the body's formal fall meeting.
Maki was selected as the architect for the center after the trustees approved $22 million for the project last December. No deadline has been set for the building's completion.
Maki's presentation outlined his vision for the building, including an amphitheater space called the "Agora."
"It brings a new vibrancy to a very central part of campus," Gutmann said. It will add to the "energetic and engaged deliberative culture that is thriving here at Penn."
Maki called his design "not just modern, but also classical," citing the building's location between the contemporary Charles Addams Hall and the more traditional ARCH building on 36th Street.
The new building will also house offices and meeting spaces for Public Policy Center researchers and administrators.
It is at the "most A of A locations, especially for undergraduate life," said Trustee Wendy Joseph, who serves on the Facilities and Campus Planning Committee.
Gutmann added that the institution of a new annual lecture series -- which will take place in the Agora -- will help put the center to use right away.
And bringing world-renowned scholars to the building's central campus location will help ensure that all students have access to those debates, Annenberg Public Policy Center Director Kathleen Hall Jamieson said.
Maki's "beautiful new design ... will ensure we integrate that vision for our campus," Jamieson said. "We don't [currently] have a space like that."
