A Fashionable New Addition to the Village
Photo by Matthew Sussman.
The 2014 opening of the The New School’s University Center, will not only bring 375,000 square feet of new space to its campus, but also enable the university to bring downtown one of its schools. Parsons The New School for Design has just announced that with the start of the Spring 2014 semester, the School of Fashion will call Greenwich Village its home. Classes will take place in the new University Center as well as other parts of the Parsons campus, which also includes the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Fifth Avenue and 13th Street.
The move is part of a larger ambition of both Parsons and The New School—to encourage interdisciplinary exchange among students, faculty and staff across the university. Said Parsons Executive Dean Joel Towers to a reporter from Women’s Wear Daily: “We’re globally recognized in fashion, but Parsons is also a leader in other areas of design… With the move downtown we’ll be able to bring all the students together.”
The new University Center will provide a space for all the disciplines at The New School, with more than 200,000 square feet of academic space—including state-of-the-art classrooms and studio space, a library, student lounges, a resource center, auditorium, cafeteria and event café.
“As we evolve the curriculum,” Fashion Dean Simon Collins told Women’s Wear Daily, “we hope [our students] have more time to interact with the city and their fellow students. With [other New School] students across the street, or in the next room, it’s a lot easier.”