R&D Magazine Awards Kimball Hall Lab of the Year

We are pleased to announce the Cornell University Kimball Hall Renovation has been awarded the Renovated Lab of the Year by R&D Magazine.

The Laboratory of the Year Awards recognizes excellence in research laboratory design, planning and construction. The annual international competition receives entries from the best new and renovated laboratories and represent a wide variety of laboratory types such as research, quality assurance/control, teaching, software development, environmental, clinical, forensic and testing and standards.

Our design for the Kimball Hall Renovation created an open flexible suite of visually connected spaces to accommodate the required range of research needs. The organization of the plan is based on a suite of three layers: open laboratory, support zone and a non-lab office area for the associated faculty and their students. Each layer has specific design criteria to tune its capability and minimize energy space.

As the first project implemented following the publication of our 2012 Master Plan for Cornell University’s College of Engineering, the renovation of Kimball hall also had to establish a new identity for laboratory space within the College. The bright daylit environment of the research suite served as a background to a simple palette of high contract colored accent walls and bold material choices. The colors reinforce the layering of the plan without dominating the minimalistic rigor of the laboratory organization.

The bright daylit suite of spaces within the renovated space are punctuated by bold accent colors to heighten a radical transformation of the College of Engineering’s original 1952 buildings.

Kimball Hall also earned LEED® Gold Certification as the project achieved a 68% reduction in energy usage as compared to a typical biology or engineering lab in this climate. This equals an EUI of 144 kBtu/SF which is equivalent to the annual energy that 860 homes in the northeast would consume.

The project was originally initiated as an interior renovation project, but ultimately was elected to improve the exterior envelope to further reduce energy demands. All the existing steel framed, single paned windows in Kimball Hall were replaced with full height, low-e insulting glazed curtainwalls with integral sunshades that run from the first floor to the third floor. The new curtainwalls, open ceilings and high level of transparency bring daylight deep into the floor plate.

The new mechanical infrastructure is located on the roof above level three and has the capability to connect into the future renovation of level one. A Solar Wall is integrated into the south face of the rooftop screenwall. The Solar Wall is a renewable energy source that takes advantage of the southern orientation of the screen wall and pre-tempers the air before entering the air handler during the cold winter months of central New York.

Related:
Cornell University Kimball Hall Renovation Earns LEED® Gold
New Photography: Fall 2015