Shop Talk: Big Building at RPI, Big Plans at Princeton and Stanford

A $190-million media and arts center is opening at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute image)

One hill, two functions: Staff members at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute expect to be giving lots of tours next month, when the university formally opens the $190-million Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center that it dug into a hillside with a 45-degree slope. The building, which the university says is “the world’s largest multifunction space dedicated to scientific research and the performing arts,” houses a traditional concert hall and flexible spaces for experimental art, performance, or research. Design was by Grimshaw Architects.

More plans for Princeton: Representatives of Steven Holl Architects and Princeton University have unveiled plans for the university’s new Arts and Transit Neighborhood — a curious hybrid resulting from the proximity of Princeton’s influential McCarter Theatre to a New Jersey Transit line affectionately known as the Dinky. The plans call for a new three-building, 130,000-square-foot arts complex with a gallery, a theater, and a dance studio, as well as for a new Dinky station 460 feet farther from town than the current station. Mr. Holl’s firm took on the planning job after the architect Renzo Piano backed out.

Engineering building: A Stanford University alumnus, Jen-Hsun Huang, has given the university $30-million toward the cost of a 130,000-square-foot engineering building already under construction. The building, by Boora Architects, will be the second in a new Stanford quadrangle devoted to science and engineering. Due to open in 2010, its most prominent feature will be a four-story rotunda housing what the university says will be a “nearly bookless” library. The building was designed with sustainability as a goal, but Stanford uses its own sustainability standards, rather than those of the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program.