The Philip & Cheryl MilsteinTennis Center at Columbia University takes forward-thinking design to another level — sea level, to be specific. Opened in 2023 as part of the Baker Athletics Complex on the northern tip of Manhattan, the Lions’ new state-of-the-art home replaces an air-supported structure but is still positioned between Columbia’s football, track and lacrosse stadium and the Harlem River. Designers looked to future potential rises in sea level, as well as the rare New York City hurricane, when pitching the idea of a flood vent system that would allow the facility’s ground floor to take on water rather than fight it off by fortifying exterior walls or raising the entire structure 10 feet — both more expensive options by millions of dollars. Vents along exterior walls are positioned slightly above ground-floor level and recessed into a stone veneer chosen to mimic local soil stratification, whereas vents along interior walls are level with the floor. In each case, the vents allow water to advance and recede through the same opening. “Rather than trying to keep the water out, which is a costly strategy of basically building waterproof doors and waterproof walls, we let the water in,” says project manager Tyler Hinckley of architecture firm Perkins+Will’s Boston office. In all, 37 exterior vents and 27 interior vents line three sides of 52,000 square feet of floor space. “This is an off-the-shelf product that we chose to embrace and integrate into the coursing of the masonry,” says Hinkley, adding that the vent concept was not a hard sell, despite no code requirement and relatively low flood risk. “We met with their insurance people, and they were all about it. ‘Absolutely.’ If we had a Sandy-like hurricane hit Manhattan again with higher seas, then you might get this kind of storm condition where it would have to flood through the building. That’s a big if, but this is looking forward. We want to design for that and not ignore it.”
