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The Davis Center manifests the enduring impact of student advocacy for social justice and inclusive community at Williams College. Tracing its roots to 1969 campus protests, the renovated and expanded Center reopened in 2024 as a hub of programs and spaces supporting historically underrepresented communities and advancing campus engagement with complex issues of identity, history and culture. Through a significant new addition and comprehensive energy retrofit renovations to the 19th century Rice and Jenness Houses, the new Davis Center provides fully accessible resources and community spaces for students and faculty. It symbolizes the College’s commitment to and progress toward a fully inclusive community dedicated to the social, emotional, and academic growth of all students.
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On Williams’ beautiful, hilly campus, making physical connections fully accessible is a challenge. This project creates a new, fully accessible connection to Walden Street with a new path that winds past the Jenness South Lawn, crosses a new pedestrian-oriented tabletop at Morley Drive, and connects to the heart of the Davis Center beyond. A public entry facing Spring Street establishes new Davis Center frontage on Williamstown’s major commercial street. On the ground floor, the event space and community kitchen have doors that open out onto the patio beyond, creating an indoor/outdoor space for large community events. Along the upstairs corridor, major windows oriented to the north and south bring natural light deep into the interior and provide views to the mountain ranges beyond.
Rigorous material research enabled the project to avoid Red List chemicals - the “worst in class” substances prevalent in the building industry that pose serious risks to human health and the environment. The Davis Center is net-zero operational carbon and net-zero embodied carbon, incorporating fossil-fuel free systems, deep-energy retrofit and adaptive reuse, low-carbon wood structure, and purchased carbon offsets. Pursuing Living Building Challenge Petal Certification, the Davis Center is a bold and vivid expression of Williams’ commitment to cultivating a community that is socially just, culturally rich, and ecologically restorative. Sustainability Awards: Chicago Athenaeum Green Good Design (2025); Architects’ Newspaper Best of Design, Social Impact (2024)
The reimagined 25,800 sf Davis Center is a unified complex with a major new addition nestled between the existing, beloved Rice and Jenness Houses. A central public plaza unites the three buildings, bounded by a winding riverine bioswale defining the edge of the Davis Center precinct. The project carves a new universally accessible path down to Walden Street and establishes a new public entrance facing Spring Street, reaching out past campus edges to connect to Williamstown beyond. Flanked by the hipped roofs and dormers of Rice and Jenness Houses, the new wing of the Davis Center re-interprets domestic roof typologies with a dynamic roofscape echoing the peaks and valleys of the surrounding Berkshire mountains. From within, this roofscape is experienced as a series of folded ceiling planes making each space in the upper level unique. The addition is clad in charred wood, a symbolic celebration of the community’s resilience in the face of struggle and adversity. Developed with extensive input from the nearly two dozen student groups that call the Davis Center home, the complex retains the residential scale of Jenness and Rice while establishing an open, transparent ground floor that acts as a civic invitation to broad campus engagement. It provides a variety of dynamic spaces to house expanded academic, cultural and social programs.
“The Davis Center space is ripe with history, expressed and symbolized in the structure itself and a place where all can come together, learn about identities and cultures, and dialogue across differences.” Leticia Smith-Evans Haynes ’99 Vice President for Institutional Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Leers Weinzapfel Associates is a practice recognized for its exceptional quality of design for the public realm in urban and campus contexts. The group’s special strength is a “mission impossible” ability to meet extraordinarily difficult building challenges with uncommon design clarity, elegance, and refinement. We are committed to providing meaningful spaces for human interaction and to promoting social well-being. Our work is diverse, including technically demanding infrastructure installations, advanced learning and living environments for educational institutions, to civic buildings and community recreation centers. In 2007, the American Institute of Architects honored us with the Firm Award, the highest distinction the AIA bestows on an architecture practice, the first and only woman-owned firm to be so honored. ARCHITECT Magazine has included the firm on its list of Top 50 architecture firms in the country, for the past five years in a row.
