Portfolio / Princeton Site Model in Maple

As part of Princeton University’s Arts and Transit Project, Steven Holl was selected to design the Lewis Center For The Arts. The Arts and Transit Project aims to not only expand opportunities in the arts for students on campus, but also to engage with the surrounding community. In keeping with this goal, Holl’s design maximizes porosity and movement. Instead of a single monolithic building or impenetrable quad, the Holl design is comprised of three buildings—an arts building, a music building, and a theater and dance building—forming a courtyard that opens up to both the campus and surrounding neighborhood.

For this project, we cut the site model from a panel made from solid maple on our CNC router. The model was designed to accommodate the separate building models prepared by the architects. The deep pocket of the model hints at how the design attempts to maximize the space for the programming within while keeping the scale of the project in line with the surrounding buildings of the campus and neighborhood.

Images of the finished site model with buildings provided by Steven Holl Architects.