Only a handful of students and professors attended Tuesday’s forum with Dean David Rubin of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications concerning the building process of Newhouse III, which is scheduled to open in August 2007.

At the meeting, Susan Nash, director of administration in the Newhouse school, presented several images of the proposed new complex’s exterior, as well as floor plans of the interior, which will include a Food.com dining complex and a 350-seat auditorium. After construction is completed, all three Newhouse buildings will connect together.

After 30 minutes, the forum was relocated to a student lounge on the fourth floor of Newhouse II, where attendees could look down onto the construction site. Rubin, who spoke only briefly, did not attend the rest of the forum.

Nash, who has served on what is now the building committee for the past seven years, provided the majority of the information during the meeting.

There is only one section of the foundation wall of Newhouse III remaining to be constructed, Nash said. After the foundation is completed, the workers will start erecting the steel frame. The steel shipment is set to arrive in April.

The committee discussed details of the new Food.com dining complex that will form the social hub of all three buildings on what has come to be called the ‘superfloor,’ Nash said.

‘One of the charges given to the architects was social interaction,’ Nash said. ‘There are social nooks throughout the building.’

Food.com will have stations with different types of food to create a marketplace environment, Nash said. The social area will be accessible without passing through the food area, and will include both traditional tables as well as higher ones with stools and club and lounge-style chairs.

In addition to the social area of Food.com, there will be a student lounge on what is now the Newhouse plaza level and a reading room on the fourth floor, Nash said.

One of the highlights of Newhouse III is the 350-seat auditorium that can be converted into event space for career fairs and dinners, Nash said.

Nash described the exterior of Newhouse III as a ‘glass, serpentine-like structure’ while showing computer-generated images of the view from Crouse Avenue.

The new building will have glass exteriors on the North, West and South sides, Nash said. The colors of glass and frit patterns, nearly invisible horizontal lines on the glass that moderate the amount of light passing through and reflected, were selected by the architects Tuesday, after a testing period at the site.

The text of the First Amendment will be written on the glass walls of the building with a new technology that makes it readable from the outside while invisible from the inside, Nash said.

Other decisions made by the architects and the building committee on Monday and Tuesday were interior details such as color scheme, carpets and tiles, said Michael Lopardi, a sophomore broadcast journalism major and Daily Orange staff writer. Lopardi, who organized the meeting, has been the student representative to the building committee for the past year.

Newhouse III, like I and II, will use whites and grays, but will have new colors of blue and a soft yellow, in addition to maple-colored wooden slat ceilings, Lopardi said.

‘It will provide a modern and unique look to the third building, but still represents the past,’ Lopardi said. ‘The architects have been very responsive and very versatile to our needs as they change.’

Lopardi described hanging staircases in the atrium of Newhouse III, the bottom steps of which will extend underneath the higher ones, producing benches.

The new building will also have faculty offices, two classrooms, a 52-workstation media lab and focus-group room with two-way glass for observations, Nash said.

‘I’m really excited and really jealous,’ said Jackie Ionin, a junior advertising major who attended the forum after receiving an e-mail advertisement. ‘It sounds like it’s going to be a great building for students.’

Lopardi was not surprised by the small turnout at the meeting. Before the forum, he said he expected it to be more of a briefing and not necessarily draw many people.

‘Part of me wishes I could get more feedback from students, but maybe they’re comfortable with what’s going on,’ Lopardi said. ‘I’m hoping that they really are happy and not just apathetic, but we want people to stay connected.’

Published on March 7, 2006 at 12:00 pm