Bloomberg Student Center comes alive for festive grand opening celebration

Johns Hopkins University's new Bloomberg Student Center overflowed with energy and activity Thursday during its grand opening celebration, its sun-splashed space brimming with conversation, camaraderie, and curiosity.

Hundreds gathered in the soaring, multi-tiered living room space for a program that began with a montage of student performances highlighting the building's many features and amenities

JHU President Ron Daniels walked to the podium to the sounds of the Talking Heads' "This Must Be the Place"—a song, he said, he had long imagined hearing in the building's massive atrium and also a subtle acknowledgement that, after 150 years and a few false starts, the university finally has what generations of Hopkins students have long sought—a place wholly devoted to student life.

"This morning, at the dawn of our 150th year, we are here thanks to the extraordinary generosity of our alumni and friends, many of whom are with us today, and to the leadership of the building's namesake, Mike Bloomberg," Daniels said. "This constellation of supporters has together turned our students' long-harbored dream into a reality.

"This is the place that will bring together students from all walks of life to perform, create, break bread, and let their imaginations soar, as the Talking Heads say, with their 'feet on the ground, their head in the sky.'"

The Bloomberg Student Center—named for JHU alum Michael R. Bloomberg, Engr '64, founder of Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the 108th mayor of New York City, in recognition of his extraordinary commitment to supporting students across Hopkins—was purposefully designed to meet the evolving needs of the Hopkins student community, creating spaces devoted to fostering connections and engagement.

The 150,000-square-foot building includes a state-of-the-art food hall featuring local vendors, a pub and coffee bar, a flexible 250-seat performance venue, a central atrium with open seating, dance studios, club meeting rooms, recording studios, flexible gathering places, a digital media center, and an esports lounge.

The building embodies the spirit of student opportunity, access, and excellence championed by Daniels and bolstered by Bloomberg, most notably via his historic gift to the university of $1.8 billion in support of undergraduate financial aid in 2018 and his $1 billion gift to expand financial aid for JHU medical and graduate students in 2024.

"Classes are important, but it's the people and the relationships and the experiences that have a lasting effect," Bloomberg said during his remarks Thursday. "Meeting people and discovering new things and debating new ideas and old ideas—that's what makes college so special and so formative. And campuses need places where that can happen."

It was that idea—of bringing people together to create a spirit of community—that animated the work of the international renowned architectural design firm Bjarke Ingels Group, said its namesake, BIG founder and creative director Bjarke Ingels. The Bloomberg Student Center was designed by BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group and award-winning interior architect Rockwell Group in collaboration with executive architect Shepley Bulfinch and landscape designer Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates.

The team's work began in earnest, Ingels noted, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving the architects and designers to imagine a space for connection and socialization even as they were isolated in their own homes.

"You can see how much we were dreaming of creating an amazing place to bring people together," he said. "Essentially, the Bloomberg Student Center is an attempt to create social critical mass, where the campus meets the city, to bring together all of the student activities that have historically been spread all over campus … and unite them in this timber village of 29 individual timber pavilions that climb the natural topography."

David Rockwell, founder and president of Rockwell Group, shared similar sentiments.

"We're in this world of overflowing digital information and virtual communities, and this building was made of something different," Rockwell said. "This [space] is [made up of] building blocks of real-time connection, moments and memories that happen in between all your planned activities. It's a place designed to capture the energy and spontaneity of this challenging and formative time in students' lives. And I hope that this will become a vibrant heart for the campus and spark all kinds of new creative ideas."

That creativity was in evidence throughout the student center on Thursday. Behind the program's second-level stage, the late-morning sun radiated through suspended multicolored handblown glass orbs, a signature lighting fixture installation by Cuban-American artist Jorge Pardo, who also attended the festivities. Students filled many of the building's multipurpose rooms across four levels, practicing music and dance, playing foosball and ping pong.

The program was bookended by student musicians from the Peabody Institute, the Krieger School of Arts & Sciences, and the Whiting School of Engineering performing "It's All Right," originally recorded in 1963 by The Impressions and more recently released by Jon Batiste.

The Bloomberg Student Center project reflects years of student input and more than 1,500 voices from across the university, which were essential in shaping the building's design and programming.

"As Johns Hopkins begins its next 150 years, I am delighted to call this place home, a place animated by the people who fill it and by those who have brought this vision to fruition," Daniels said. "… This is a home where everyone wants to be, and we could not be more grateful that this is our place."