The state-of-the-art building on Lake Hollingsworth Drive at Johnson Avenue by world-renowned architect Robert A.M. Stern was dedicated on 12 November 2010. The 25,000 square feet Christoverson Building, which will house the College’s English department and the modern languages department, will provide classrooms, seminar rooms, a writing centre, language and computer labs, a film studies theatre, and faculty offices, all organised around a double-height atrium.
The building features a dramatic, welcoming roof with a lawn scaled for students to meet between classes in the front. Two sets of stairs lead up from the lawn to a loggia overlooking the lake. Behind the building are 20 parking spaces for faculty and visitors. The student lounge is featured beneath the sweeping roof on the piano nobile with a double-height heart of the building that encourages mixing between faculty and students.
Grouped around this central social space are four classrooms and a seminar room while at the upper level the space is ringed by 20 faculty offices. At ground level are four laboratories dedicated to film studies, language instruction, writing, and computers.
Robert A.M. Stern stated that the Christoverson Humanities Building reflects the desire to create a new gateway to the campus that will at the same time become a new focus for academic life.
The building has been named in honour of Dr. Christoverson, an FSC trustee who gave the lead gift for the building, and her late husband.
The Christoverson Humanities Building is the third building by New York-based Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA) on the Florida Southern campus. The other two buildings include two residence halls that compose the Barnett Residential Life Center opened in 2008 and 2009.
