Legacy of Learning
(10.04.2011) -- New York Law School has been training lawyers since 1891. Its new 235,000-sq.-ft. academic building in lower Manhattan--part of a $190 million campus renovation--features a series of exhibitions that puts its legacy front and center. Environmental graphics by Poulin + Morris infuse the building with the school's history and honor distinguished alumni and faculty.
Poulin + Morris (New York) also developed wayfinding signage and donor recognition programs for the school's newly expanded campus.
Inside the lobby of the main campus building (designed by SmithGroup), visitors are greeted with a mural honoring Maurice Greenberg, a 1950 graduate, generous patron, and former chairman and CEO of AIG (formerly the world's largest securities and financial company). The mural includes a portrait and brief biography of Greenberg, as well as a series of bold yellow bars containing notable quotes by him.
On the second level, a changeable exhibition entitled "How We Teach" celebrates how students learn through doing. A corridor wall is filled with visuals that illustrate faculty/student partnerships: real-world projects, portraits of participants, quotes, published articles, and accounts of successful collaborations between students and faculty in high-profile cases--including the Racial Justice Project, in which six students filed an amicus curiae brief in a racial discrimination case presented to the Supreme Court in 2009.
Levels three and four host an expansive timeline that traces the school's history from 1891 to the present, highlighting significant events via layering of vignettes, historical information, portraits, and data.
Project fabricators were Applied Image (Freehold, N.J.) and Design Communications Ltd. (Boston).