Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies
University of Pennsylvania

The design work for the Katz Center treats the building as an evolving framework, recalibrating existing spaces to support contemporary scholarly and public life. Rather than replacement, the project operates through careful adjustment—working with inherited proportions, circulation, and service zones to establish new spatial relationships while maintaining continuity with the Center’s identity.

At the ground floor, the entry sequence and lobby are reshaped as a civic interior capable of accommodating multiple modes of use throughout the day. Subtle shifts in enclosure, transparency, and thickness allow the space to function alternately as threshold, gallery, reading room, or gathering area. Built elements such as reception desks, display surfaces, and seating niches are absorbed into architectural assemblies, reducing the distinction between fixed construction and changing use. As a result, the room remains composed and legible even as activities and furniture configurations evolve.

On the upper floors, rooms are shaped less by singular program labels than by proportional clarity and infrastructural logic. Service elements are consolidated, ceiling heights selectively recovered, and structural rhythms emphasized to support lectures, seminars, informal study, and conversation. Screens, shelving, and large openings mediate between openness and enclosure, allowing spaces to expand, overlap, or separate without permanent subdivision.

Material choices reinforce this continuity. A restrained palette of wood, glass, and metal is deployed consistently across the building, establishing a shared architectural language. Wood introduces warmth and acoustic softness, glass extends sightlines and shared light, and metal details lend precision and durability. Together, these elements quietly frame activity, allowing the life of the Center—its people, objects, and exchange of ideas—to remain at the forefront.

Through these strategies, the Katz Center is understood not as a series of fixed rooms, but as a set of interrelated spaces capable of supporting both the constancy of scholarship and the changing rhythms of public engagement.

Philadelphia, PA

In Design

 
 
 
 

Constructed in the 1980s, the existing building presents an imposing and largely opaque façade. The proposed design reimagines the interior as a “front porch” to the Center—an outward-facing space that makes visible its intellectual life. Events and exhibitions tied to the Center’s annual research themes are brought into view, alongside glimpses of the rare book library that anchors its academic mission.

On the third floor, a former multi-purpose room is reconfigured as a focused lecture space that engages the adjacent terrace as an extension of the room. Where the terrace was previously accessed through a single door, the new design introduces a sliding glass wall, allowing the space to open fully during temperate weather and special events. Interior walls are shaped around existing structural columns and articulated with fabric panels and vertical battens, using geometry and material depth to diffuse and absorb sound while giving the room a more intentional architectural character.

The top floor of the building offers layered views across downtown Philadelphia and the Independence Hall historic complex. Conceived as a shared lounge for research fellows, the space is also calibrated to accommodate mid-size lectures alongside more intimate modes of conversation and study, allowing the room to shift seamlessly between collective and individual use. The central lobby features a round table that is centrally to the Center’s goal of conversation.

The lounge is spatially connected to the central lobby and divided by a freestanding cabinet wall that houses a cafe and storage. The lounge includes a variety of seating configurations for individual and group meeting. Bookcases, backed with soft fabric panels attenuate the sound within the space.

The sixth-floor lounge and meeting spaces are framed by north, south, and west views. With stairs, mechanical rooms, and bathrooms consolidated at the perimeter, the public areas are allowed to flow freely across the floor plate, maximizing access to light and long views.

The third floor is a more limited renovation, including the only publicly accessible stair, corridors from the elevator, and the rear events space and terrace. The existing rare books library anchors the center of the floor and is visible through carefully coordinated window openings.