As a new part of the historic campus of the Yale Divinity School (YDS), the Living Village will consist of new graduate student housing buildings, a physical plant building and a renovated entry to the Sterling Divinity Quadrangle. The Quadrangle possesses a strong “grain,” a cohesive arrangement composed of evident hierarchy, interrelated proportions, sacred geometry, and human-scale dimensions. The Living Village will weave into the site’s warp and weft, taking cues from the Quadrangle’s grain while signifying a new direction for the school.
By adopting the scale and proportion of the historic campus, the new architecture is immediately familiar. The configuration of the Living Village recognizes and augments the pre-established organizational systems on the Divinity School campus in order to meaningfully contribute to the larger comprehensive campus, without distracting from, or diluting, the historic structures.
The Living Building Challenge (LBC) establishes the most rigorous standards in the world in a variety of categories including site impacts, energy, water, materials, and resources, as well as issues of beauty and inspiration, human equity, health, and happiness. Once completed, the Living Village will be one of only 26 buildings in the world which meet these performance standards. In order to do so, the Living Village must generate more energy than it uses (net positive), capture and treat all water on site, and be constructed using healthy materials.
