Edward P. Evans Hall

The building was completed in 2013.[1] Construction costs reportedly totalled $189 million,[2] $50 million of which was donated by alumnus Edward P. Evans.[3] The four-story building with an enclosed courtyard includes classrooms, offices, and student and meeting spaces.[4][1] The building was dedicated in January 2014.[2] Evans, who became its namesake, died before its completion.[3]

Due to Evans Hall's glass-intense design, bird window collisions became an immediate problem. Data collected at Evans Hall by Yale University affiliates suggests that an average of three birds per day struck the hall's windows in spring 2014. Since then, efforts have been underway to record and study bird mortality caused by Evans Hall, with a major report published in October 2020 titled Why Yale's Evans Hall Is a Death Trap for Birds and What Can Be Done About It[5]

According to the report, 262 birds of at least 47 species were found stunned, injured, or dead due to window strikes at Evans Hall from April 2018 to mid-October 2020, including at least 18 birds of conservation concern.[5] This data was gathered through a combination of informal carcass surveys and citizen science data. Given likely undercounts due to scavengers and delayed mortality, it is conservative to estimate that the building has killed over 700 birds since it opened in January 2014. At least 17 birds were species of conservation concern. For example, the building killed 12 Northern Parulas, a species of special concern under Connecticut’s Endangered Species Act. A rare Bicknell’s Thrush, a species IUCN-listed as “vulnerable” and of highest conservation priority, was also killed. It was the first Bicknell’s Thrush added to the Peabody Museum of Natural History’s collection since 1975.

The building was designed by Foster and Partners.[1]

In ARCHITECT: The Magazine of the American Institute of Architects, the official magazine of the American Institute of Architects, Thomas de Monchaux noted "each area between the elliptical classrooms and curved glazing features lively gatherings on banana-shaped furnishings—evoking something between a conversation pit and an airport gate".[2]

In the Architects' Journal, Ellis Woodman wrote that "Evans Hall's language of full-height, circular, hollow-section columns ranged in front of an expanse of glazing hardly represents a departure for the practice".[6]

Both Woodman and de Monchaux compared the building to the Carré d'Art in Nîmes, France, also designed by Forster and Partners.[2]