The Lavin Bernick Center for University Life: Landscape Design

The Lavin Bernick Center at Tulane University includes the design of a pocket park and plaza connected to the redesign and expansion of the student center by project lead VJAA (Vincent James Associates Architects). Coen + Partners intent for the landscape surrounding the Center was to create a vibrant heart for campus life by reconnecting the interior spaces of the building to the exterior while successfully knitting the site into the existing campus fabric; thus, the architecture and landscape had to work as one cohesive unit. Coen+Partners conducted extensive research on the best building practices to withstand constant fluxes in climate such as flooding, tropical storms, hurricane force winds, and extreme heat and humidity. Research on the climatic conditions and best construction practices for this region was critically important to the outcome of this project. In addition, research into the design vernacular of New Orleans helped to prescribe a series of precepts for the landscape design. The design explores ways to convey the lushness of the semitropical New Orleans climate through refined form and texture. The landscape spaces are designed to create great flexibility for a myriad of activities. This allows for multiple events to take place simultaneously without compromising the interconnectedness of overall design. Gathering areas radiate from the building edge at grade creating a series of outdoor rooms while allowing for the boundaries of the building site to disappear. Structured elements such as large umbrellas provide shade for the upper terraces while a crape myrtle bosque shelters the lower terrace and filters views from the street into the pocket park. Originally designed as a building façade treatment by the architect, Coen + Partners proposed extending vertical planes of climbing vines from the building into the surrounding landscape through the creation of custom vine screens. The insertions create soft divisions between passive and active spaces, providing filtered privacy for adjacent reading areas and variable levels of shading to help mediate extreme shifts of solar gain. The vines become a focal point for the pocket park and are an innovative solution for introducing native plants into the compact space. Linear ipe wood and aluminum benches along thoroughfares and within the pocket park recall the horizontal façade treatment of the building. A nearly three-hundred foot long custom bench conceals a concrete flood wall protecting the lower level of the building from seasonal flooding.