The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center is a state-of-the art facility for new research, education, and public engagement that creates a stronger presence in Washington, D.C. for all of Johns Hopkins University’s academic departments. The Center’s design, achieved in collaboration by Rockwell Group (Interior Architect), Ennead Architects (Exterior Architect) and SmithGroup (Architect of Record), breaks down the barriers between academic disciplines and creates a true commons for communication and collaboration.
Rockwell Group reimagined the building's interior, creating a ten-story vertical quad to support myriad academic purposes and public gatherings with adaptable cutting-edge classrooms, multiple lounge areas, and convening spaces that rise in various configurations from within and around an open, dynamic atrium. To support the university's initiatives, our design emphasizes flexibility, allowing for responsiveness to the needs of multiple graduate schools, academic programs, and future uses.
Instead of traditional stacked floor levels, the interior has been divided into interconnected, multilevel spaces.
Encouraging Spontaneous Connections
In the atrium, Rockwell Group designed a central staircase that winds through a suspended, transparent treehouse-like series of glass classrooms and open lounges, offering multiple opportunities for chance encounters among students and faculty.
At the base, "The Beach" is an informal, stepped gathering area nodding to a beloved grassy convening space on Hopkins' Baltimore-based flagship Homewood campus.
On the east side of the atrium, a large floating glass classroom hangs from a pair of steel bridge girders, supporting a lounge for socializing and studying above.
For the 38 high-tech classrooms, library, café, numerous study lounges, conference center, meeting rooms, faculty lounges, and landscaped roof terraces, Rockwell Group took a detail-oriented approach to our application of a warm and varied material palette. Layered, often intimate spaces help balance the buoyant vibrancy of the atrium with peaceful, comforting environments.
Edging Pennsylvania Avenue, we added open study and gathering spaces, including the lounge-style Irene and Richard Frary Library and a cafe run by Question Coffee.
Transparent connections and large landscaped terraces provide panoramic views of the Capitol and Washington D.C.
