In order to provide informal gathering spaces for students, the existing 1970 building of The State University of New York at New Paltz needed expansion. Designed by Ikon.5 Architects, The Campus Commons project is a steel and glass winter garden, a smooth addition to the existing Student Union building. The new structure is spanned over an existing exterior courtyard so the exterior space is successfully transformed into a pleasant university living room. The new space provides plenty of room for informal gathering, food courts, multi-purpose meeting rooms, a bookstore, student offices, entertainment center and meeting rooms.

The design implements new environmental strategies in order to achieve a LEED Silver certification, such as day light harvesting, radiant heating and cooling, recyclable materials and photo optic lighting controls.

As the space required flexibility for future changes, it was an imperative to design it column free. Therefore the architects designed a special structural tube stress skin system, which created the angular forms of the pavilion. Uniform 4 inch square structural tubes shop fabricated in large planar sections were erected on site like an over-sized origami assembly. The addition is clad in ceramic fritted glass, placed on the top of the stress skin, in order to create the enclosure.

In order to mimic the regional landscape of the Catskill Mountains, the pattern of the ceramic frit is an abstracted and digitalized version of the tectonic plates of the Shawangunks. The outcome is a clear and light steel and glass pavilion between two concrete, brutalist buildings, which transforms the experience of the entry gateway to the State University.