Meticulous craft, layered transparency and academic connectivity are the driving forces behind the New Science Center at Amherst College. Anchoring the eastern edge of the campus, the Science Center is a collection of five distinct building components, organized around a central daylit Commons and unified by a dramatic roof canopy. The Commons serves as the building’s social heart, welcoming the entire academic community through a campus scaled gesture — an ultra-transparent window into science.
The project was recently featured in Structure Magazine, detailing the specification for the architecturally exposed concrete, noting that the building was conceived as a cast-in place concrete structure. The team chose to use the concrete to maintain a level of aesthetic consistency that provides contrast against the other design elements, linking each together to create a cohesive design.
Read the article here.
Opening later this year, the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, MA is an essay in the tuning of building façades for performance. The aluminum sunshades that veil the building began as a concept tested by scoring Bristol paper. The team utilized tools from all modalities: paper models, CNC-mills, parametric studies, solar analysis, wind and water simulations and full-scale mock-ups to inform the design and drive energy use down. The ultra-high performance building is tracking a 61% reduction in energy use compared to the 2030 baseline.
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