Project description

New home for the University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science’s Andlinger Center, including teaching spaces, research laboratories, and office and meeting spaces.

Location

Northeast of the intersection of Prospect Avenue and Olden Street.

Timeline

• Construction began – Winter 2012.
• Construction completed – Fall 2015.
• Move-in begins – October 2015.
• Full occupation scheduled – Fall 2016.

Architecture style

Modern.

Project configuration

The Andlinger Center consists of three distinct but connected areas: Maeder Hall (the main lecture and meeting spaces), which faces Olden Street and Prospect Avenue; a central area contains offices, graduate student and postdoc spaces, a classroom, and teaching and research labs; a rear area holds cleanrooms and an imaging and analysis center.

The Andlinger Center is about 129,000 square feet with 60 percent of the building below grade. Though the complex looks like several structures, it is actually one building. The roughly L-shaped complex sits between the Engineering Quadrangle and Bowen Hall – tying these two buildings together with connected passageways and linking the building with the rest of Princeton campus.

Dimensions

Project size (building area): 129,000 gross square feet. Occupied basement totals approximately 80,000 gsf and above grade 49,000 gsf, plus a roof-top research terrace.

Building materials

• Exterior facade composed primarily of handmade masonry units with punched high-performance glazing set within an aluminum frame.
• Granite stone flooring both interior and exterior along with sand blasted concrete paving.
• Interior circulation towers made of exposed sand blasted concrete with ceramic tile “tapestries.”
• Felt wall coverings with laboratory notebook images applied.

Sustainability features (integrated within the building design)

• Offices located with ample access to daylight
• Exhaust fans located in towers to reduce exhaust velocities and power
• Portions of building located below grade to minimize heating/cooling loads
• High performance envelope and exterior solar shades to minimize heating and cooling
• Lighting controls to reduce electrical power usage for artificial lighting
• Radiant panel system for energy conservation in office spaces
• Operable windows and natural ventilation where possible
• Lighting controls to reduce electrical power usage
• Shower facilities for bicycle commuters
• Cascading airflow from office areas to laboratory to minimize conditioning need
• Heat recovery systems for air handling units to minimize energy need
• Variable frequency drives for equipment to reduce energy consumption
• Storm water and condensate harvesting to reduce demand from municipal water
• Ultra low flow fixtures to reduce water usage

Green roofs enhance storm water management

• Building occupants: The Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment is a shared research facility within the School of Engineering and Applied Science. When the building is fully operational, occupants will include faculty, visiting scholars, center staff, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and research staff. The lecture hall will accommodate 208 occupants.
• Administrative and faculty spaces: The building contains offices and adjoining meeting spaces for faculty members, plus offices for administrative staff of the Andlinger Center.
• Cleanroom and Imaging and Analysis Center: 27,000 nsf of cleanroom space classified into one of three categories; 1000, 10,000 and 100,000. 9,800 nsf of imaging space with the highest performing equivalent to NIST A and NIST A-1.

Landscaping highlights

Strategically integrated into a dense area of the campus, the landscape and the architecture of the new center are tightly interwoven, creating a series of small courtyard and garden spaces that overlap and mingle with the building’s architecture to create building volumes more sensitive to the campus fabric and the neighboring buildings. The unfolding experience of the ACEE landscape creates a series of medium- to small-scale landscape destinations and social spaces, thus encouraging greater use by the larger Princeton community. The development of the ACEE also builds on Princeton University Landscape Master Plan initiatives to improve the function and appearance of Shapiro Walk, a major pedestrian route between Engineering and the central campus.

Named for

The Andlinger Center is named in honor of Gerhard R. Andlinger, a Princeton alumnus in the Class of 1952 and noted international business executive who made a $100 million gift to Princeton University to accelerate research on effective and sustainable solutions to problems of energy and the environment. Princeton used the gift to create the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment within the School of Engineering and Applied Science. The lecture hall is named in recognition of a gift from Paul A. Maeder, Class of 1975.

Miscellaneous construction details

Construction crews excavated 30,000 cubic yards of soil and 28,000 cubic yards of rock from the site. The building required about 1,000 tons of steel and about 295,000 bricks.

Project team

Tod Williams Bille Tsien Architects, design architect; Sciame Construction, construction manager; Arup, engineering (mechanical, electrical, life safety, and lighting); Severud Engineering (structural); Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, landscape architect; Van Note Harvey and Judith Nitsch Associates, civil engineering.