This article was originally published in the March 2018 Princeton Echo.
A New York-based architectural firm with a strong Princeton connection has been selected to design the new residential college buildings that will mark the beginning of the latest expansion of the Princeton University campus. The campus plan envisions up to two new residential colleges located south of Poe Field, on the site of what are currently softball fields and tennis courts.
The firm is Deborah Berke Partners, and the Princeton project will be led by firm partners Berke and Maitland Jones III. Jones is the son of longtime organic chemistry professor Maitland Jones Jr., and is himself a Princeton alumnus, Class of 1987. The younger Jones earned his masters in architecture at Yale.
Jones joined the Berke firm in 1992 and became a partner in 2002. Among his projects are the Yale School of Art and the renovation and addition to the Rockefeller Arts Center at SUNY Fredonia. The firm is currently working on a building redesign for Harvard Law School and a new residential hall at Dickinson College.
According to the university’s announcement, the first residential college would accommodate an increase of 125 students per class, with buildings of varying heights with at least 500 beds, social spaces, a dining hall, and a commercial kitchen that could also support a second college. The second college would be used as a swing space to enable renovation of existing housing on campus and support a future student expansion.
The campus expansion plan proposes that new facilities for softball and tennis be included on lands south of Lake Carnegie, which already include a rugby field and cross-country course. Potential development of the second college would necessitate relocation of the Roberts Soccer Stadium and Myslik Field to the site of the current adjacent Plummer practice field. This would require a new soccer practice field, possibly east of Washington Road.
