As Alfred Lerner Hall nears its 10th birthday, the glass house is getting a makeover

Love it, hate it, or just use it as an indoor short-cut to Broadway during winters, Columbia’s Alfred Lerner Hall Student Center turns 10 years old this October.

As one of the most distinctive buildings on campus, Lerner sets itself apart as a wide-open space whose largely glass façade seems to have inspired the unfinished Barnard student center across the street. Its ultra-modern architecture was the toast of the town when first unveiled, and as Lerner approaches the big one-oh, students and administrators alike are seeking to expand its daily usability on a campus where space is precious.

The center, Columbia’s Web site explains, was designed to maximize light in the building while improving “accessibility, visibility, and an open, welcoming space in which students could interact both spontaneously and intentionally.” With a defining series of ramps that consumes much of the usable space, some find that the building is more flash than function, especially as students and extracurricular groups struggle to find meeting spaces on campus.

It may be the only place on campus where you could say that you love the comfy black chairs, natural light, and piano lounge, and hate the way your schoolwork is tilted as you attempt to complete it on a slope. It hosts one of the priciest student parties of the year—Glass House Rocks, an event sponsored by all four of Columbia’s undergraduate schools that features campus performances on the one night a year that Lerner looks like a European discotheque.

In an effort to buffer itself from layoffs due to a tightened budget, Lerner changed several of its hours this summer for the upcoming semester. Café 212 and the second floor computer labs are no longer open 24/7, shutting down at 1 a.m. from Sunday through Wednesday, and 3 a.m. Thursday through Saturday.

Lerner also opens one hour later, at 8 a.m., and the Package Center and Student Mail Services now open at 10 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and are closed Saturdays. The goal, Executive Director of Lerner Hall Operations Honey Sue Fishman explained over the summer, is to contain costs in the least disruptive way for students and faculty. Caffeine addicts and ramp devotees will still be able to permanently stake out Lerner during reading week and finals, when the building will maintain its 24/7 schedule.

Plans are also underway to renovate the largely unused sixth floor of Lerner. The plan moved administrative offices—including the dean of Student Affairs’ suite and Office of Financial Aid—to Lerner 6 this summer. Additionally, the relocation of offices to the sixth floor will allow the Office of Advising to consolidate its resources on Lerner’s fourth floor. The renovations could free up space for students to meet in the residence halls’ eventually vacated advising offices after the move, though plans for those areas are still in the works. Though Lerner 6 renovations began this summer, administrators have said they anticipate the changes and expansion to take several years and have not issued a full timeline for the project.

In the meantime, the space cramp in Lerner—and the long wait for the opening of Barnard’s student center, The Diana—means that student leaders are constantly searching for space to hold meetings and events. To remedy that, the student council opened more non-traditional areas in classroom buildings and residence halls. Up next—the Butler stacks?