Award of Merit - Higher Education

Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University

Cutting-edge technology requires cutting-edge construction. In that vein, the $47.1 million effort to construct the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University tackled a daunting job: integrating the needs of forward-thinking scientists with the institutional demands of an Ivy League university.

"It's a very beautiful, open, well-sculptured accomplishment," said one jury member. The foremost concern of the project team, led by New York City-based Barr & Barr Inc., the construction manager, was maintaining the university schedule without interrupting normal patterns of studying, socializing, and research. It set a speedy purchasing, permitting, and construction schedule that kept the development process as short as possible. It also used a modular wall system, which helped keep construction efficient and quick. The project, which broke ground in early 2001, wrapped up in June.

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The building's design allows experimental biologists, computational biologists, physicists, chemists, engineers, and applied mathematicians to come together to research the life sciences. The precast concrete panel façade also helps the building mesh the traditional stone structures across the university with the brick properties of the science complex. It also links underground to the adjacent Lewis Thomas Laboratory, which Barr & Barr built in 1986.

The new building has a curved glass atrium, meanwhile, facing an ellipse-contoured sports field, which the L-shaped footprint wraps around. Among other high-tech construction details an effort to shield those exterior glass panels from the sun. The architectural team designed an arcade of more than 30 aluminum louvers, each measuring 40 ft., which rotate in conjunction with the movement of the sun to reduce solar heat gain. In an innovative twist, the louvers create shadows in the shape of a double-helix.

One jury member called the whole façade "really quite amazing."

The high-tech visual effects of the building's exterior louvers echo on the interior. An 8-ft.-high interstitial space above each floor accommodates the mechanical, electrical, and venting systems. Another innovation is a demountable element system of modular benches and partitions that creates lab spaces.

Designed by New York City-based Rafael Viñoly Architects, the lab - which comprises the majority of the property - also incorporates social spaces for students and professors, with the grand curving glass atrium connecting different wings of the laboratories. At the building's heart, the atrium showcases an open Frank Gehry sculpture of metal and wood.