After vetting a number of leading global architecture firms, PAU was selected to design the latest residential college in the heart of Princeton’s historic campus. Hobson College—named by a generous gift from Mellody Hobson, making it the first college at Princeton named for a person of color—will replace the 1960’s era First College (formerly Wilson College). Princeton is famed for a network of gothic revival courtyards that form the heart of the campus grounds; PAU approached the enhancement of this network as an urban challenge by embracing the University’s campus plan to create a new east-west campus connection through the Hobson site as well as a series of distinct new courtyards, all of which could be activated by locating public college program on the ground floor of the new structure. The new college is envisioned as a village center, as both thoroughfare and a destination. By weaving the massing betwixt and between its collegiate gothic neighbors and a number of landmark structures by Robert Venturi, Williams & Tsien, and Harry Cobb, the new college is able to remain scale-appropriate while navigating a steep grade change. The project achieves a sense of palimpsest through both these scalar moves as well as a rich material palette that reflects historic campus architecture. A heuristic building across many dimensions, Hobson College meets environmental performance criteria demanded by both Princeton’s ambitious sustainability goals and an increasingly climate-conscious student body, setting a new gold standard through the use of mass timber construction, geothermal heating and cooling, and full recycling of demolition debris.