Design studio HGA has accomplished a pair of academic amenities, Mills Corridor and Gibbons Heart, which might be among the many first “commercially scaled mass-timber buildings” within the state of Maine.
Situated close to a grove of mature pine bushes, the neighbouring buildings are within the southeast nook of the 215-acre (87-hectare) Bowdoin School campus within the metropolis of Brunswick.
Whereas totally different in measurement and color, the buildings have asymmetrical pitched roofs that “play off one another from totally different vantage factors”.
Each buildings even have mass timber frames, wood inside finishes and brick facades.
The materiality was influenced by the area’s forests and the prevailing brick buildings at Bowdoin School, which was established in 1794, “on the daybreak of the American republic”.
At this time, the non-public school has about 1,900 college students from world wide.
The brand new buildings – formally known as Barry Mills Corridor and the John and Lile Gibbons Heart for Arctic Research – had been designed by American studio HGA, which served as each architect and structural engineer.
The studio collaborated with Consigli Building Co, which relies within the japanese US.
The bigger of the 2 buildings is Mills Corridor, a two-storey educational constructing that holds the departments of anthropology and digital and computational research.
Encompassing 30,000 sq. ft (2,787 sq. metres), the constructing is rectangular in plan with a slight bend close to the centre. Facades are clad in pink brick, which is usually discovered on campus.
Mills Corridor accommodates 4 lecture rooms and 12 college places of work, all of that are afforded views, daylight and operable home windows for pure air flow.
Further areas embrace a 60-person cinema, an occasion area for as much as 300 individuals, and numerous “huddle areas” to encourage scholar collaboration.
In distinction to its red-brick neighbour, the Gibbons Heart – which is devoted to arctic analysis and schooling – is clad in a country, black-brick exterior.
“Gibbons has a extra mysterious, introverted high quality,” stated Nat Madison, design principal at HGA.
“The black brick renders the constructing like a silhouette, whereas the beacon-like window overlooks the quad, revealing views of the galleries from campus.”
The facade therapy was dictated by the inside programme of the three-storey, 16,500-square-foot (1,533-square-metre) facility, which incorporates places of work, lecture rooms, an archaeology lab and the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum.
“A strong, high-performance constructing envelope and rigorous environmental controls permit the museum to guard and show delicate artifacts,” the workforce stated.
Each buildings had been constructed utilizing a timber body system, which HGA estimates has diminished the “constructing’s embodied carbon footprint by roughly 75 per cent when in comparison with a conventional metal construction”.
The buildings are the “first commercially scaled mass-timber buildings” in Maine, the workforce added.
Different sustainable elements embrace an all-electric heating and cooling system, which derives energy from a photovoltaic array on campus.
Inside finishes embrace polished concrete flooring, spruce laminated panels and wood-fibre acoustic ceiling panels.
The encircling panorama was knowledgeable by Arctic topography.
“Extra soil from excavation was used to type mounds, which had been sculpted to appear to be snow drifts,” the workforce stated.
Pedestrian pathways are lined in granite pavers that evoke “ice flows”, whereas salvaged marble blocks from a regional quarry had been used to create seating.
Furthermore, the workforce planted greater than 80 bushes to switch felled bushes and bolster the white pine grove to the east of the positioning.
Different latest educational initiatives embrace the eco-friendly revamp of a Twenties facility in California by Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects, and the completion of an Arizona science constructing by Grimshaw and Architekton that evokes rocks and saguaro cacti.
The images is by Michael Moran.
Venture credit:
Architect and structural engineer: HGA
Building supervisor: Consigli Building Co, Inc
MEP, lighting design: HGA
Civil engineering: Sebago Technics
Panorama design: Stimson
Mass timber: South County Publish & Beam
Exhibit design: GSM Venture
Acoustic and AV design: Acentech
