We recently celebrated the steel topping off at Boston College’s Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society (IISS). This is an important milestone on every project, but achieving it on schedule during these unprecedented times is even more celebratory than ever before.
The special occasion brought together academic leaders, the capital projects and facilities team from BC, the design team and construction manager team from Suffolk. We all signed the beam and then watched it being lifted to the ridge of the main building entry gable. It was a moment when we were all connected as contributors to this significant new building, even in a socially distant way.
The IISS will be home to the new Engineering program at Boston College. Located prominently at the heart of BC’s Middle Campus, the 157,000 GSF building will have a collegiate gothic exterior contextual to its neighbors, yet a very transparent, high performance interior core. It will house interdisciplinary research and core labs, a clean room, three maker spaces, ideation labs, general purpose classrooms, an auditorium, computer science research, with associated offices and social spaces. The project integrates sustainable strategies that reduce energy consumption, targeting a 25% site-energy savings and an EUI of 89 kBtu/sf-yr. Anticipated completion is early 2022.
Related Content:
YDC Tour: Onward and Upward – Renovations and New Construction at Boston College
A New Home for Interdisciplinary Studies at Boston College
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.