To accommodate a flourishing campus with a growing student body and faculty, NYU Shanghai is considering a new home in Pudong, subject to future government consideration and approvals.
Vice Chancellor Jeffrey Lehman discussed at Tuesday’s all-staff meeting the university's hopes to move to a new campus within the next five years. He spoke about the internal planning that is already underway to design facilities that can accommodate more than 2,000 undergraduate and graduate students.
Lehman said that "our new campus should be a gateway to China for foreign students and a gateway to the world for all, and especially for the Chinese students. It should be intrinsically of Shanghai - but connected to the world."
"It is amazing that we are already in our fourth year in the current building on Century Avenue," Lehman added. "But we knew that it would not be big enough to hold our school when we are fully grown."
The world-renowned architectural firm, Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF), brings a wealth of higher education experience to this project. The architects are proposing to leverage the “gateway” metaphor to inform the overall project, and are designing schematics that will celebrate the University’s double identity.
The current design scheme suggests a new campus with four buildings and gateways at the ground level, arranged in a pinwheel-like structure that comes together as a single building above the fifth floor, and was developed after consultation with students, faculty and staff representatives.
Stay tuned for further updates in upcoming months.