Princeton’s new sustainable-energy-research complex will have three levels, one of them below grade. (Princeton U. images)
Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects has created a design for Princeton University’s two-year-old Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment that would link three new buildings to existing structures and create a multilevel garden around them. The new buildings will total 127,000 square feet, and the project will bring renovations to some existing facilities as well.
A news release from the university did not give a price for the project, located in the Prospect Avenue area of the campus. The Andlinger Center, devoted to sustainability energy production and use, was created with a $100-million donation from Gerhard Andlinger, a businessman who graduated from the university in 1952. Construction is expected to begin in 2012 and finish up in 2015.
The three-level complex will include classrooms, offices, a stand-alone lecture hall, and specialized research labs with equipment that must be isolated from vibration. To accomplish that, the labs will be constructed one level below grade, directly on bedrock. The gardens will include sunken courtyards that will bring daylight down to this level.
The complex will be constructed with a number of sustainable features, including vegetated roofs and as much natural ventilation as possible. And it aims to make improvements to a part of the campus with a number of lackluster engineering facilities, two of which the complex will link to. Said Mr. Williams, who is also a Princeton alumnus: “I knew the engineering area well and didn’t feel like it was part of the fabric of the university. I was thrilled to realize we might contribute to the research and make it a loved portion of campus.”
Construction will require tearing down a vacant 1892 building known as the Osborn Clubhouse. It was originally constructed as an athletics training facility, according to the Princeton Alumni Weekly. At least two well-known architects who are also alumni—Robert Venturi and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk—have protested the planned demolition in letters to Ron McCoy, the university architect. Mr. McCoy said that Princeton had hoped to incorporate the clubhouse into the complex, but that doing so had not proven feasibile.
Among projects Mr. Williams and Ms. Tsien have undertaken on university campuses are Skirkanich Hall, at the University of Pennsylvania, the East Asian Library, at the University of California at Berkeley, and the forthcoming Logan Center for the Arts, at the University of Chicago.
On a plan released by the university, existing buildings are gray and new construction is red.
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