A beautiful summer day delivered the perfect backdrop for the topping off ceremony at the Bonney Science Center at Bates College. Topping off ceremonies are always exciting milestones. However, in this instance the symbolic tradition holds greater meaning as an optimistic marker for the future. Especially considering that promising scientific research is critical to help solve the current pandemic.
Bates College’s facilities team, the construction team and team members from Consigli and PAYETTE attended. Michael Bonney and his wife Alison Grott, both proud Bates College alumni who made the lead gift for the center, gave remarks along with Bates President Clayton Spencer.
It is our sincere hope that for the decades to come, the students and faculty who come through [the science center] include the folks who figure out how to deal with our most vexing problems…climate change, the assault on humanity by viruses, and microbes more broadly. And frankly, because this center is located in this campus and our history, also social justice. Because the kids who come through here will have to go through all these other buildings and think about the world differently.
Michael Bonney
Bonney Science Center is an exploration of contemporary expression in deep dialogue with the context of a traditional New England college campus. The new 65,000 square foot building will house Biology, Chemistry and Neuroscience programs and will foster the evolution of science education at the College. It embraces the advanced technologies and interdisciplinary collaboration that characterize bioscience research and teaching. As the first academic building to be built outside the campus core and across a major street, the creative design is critical to establish its identity as part of Bates College’s campus.
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Respecting the Campus Fabric
The 2025 OpenLAB Boston studio work will be exhibited at Virginia Tech Monday, March 2nd through Wednesday, March 4th.
Please join us for the following events on Monday, March 2nd:
11:00am - Lecture with Parke MacDowell
1:00pm Lobby talk with Kevin Sullivan
This year’s studio identifies seven sites along the frayed edges of Boston’s Greenway. The Greenway is a one-mile-long linear park running through the heart of the city, reconnecting downtown Boston with its waterfront. Many of the parcels along its edges remain undeveloped and present mute, blank facades to the public realm. Addressing and repairing these edges through acts of infilling, layering, grafting, framing, and placemaking is the core focus of the studio—SUTURE.