Rockwell Integrated Sciences Center Receives 2021 SCUP Excellence Award

We are pleased to announce that Lafayette College’s Rockwell Integrated Sciences Center has been honored with a SCUP/AIA-CAE Excellence in Architecture for a New Building as an Honor Award Recipient.

Conceived as an “inside–out” building, the Rockwell Integrated Sciences Center revolves around the building’s heart, a vibrant four-story gathering space. Perched on a steep hill and nested tightly between existing buildings, this LEED Platinum building provides visual proximity and intimate connection between the science departments within, and uses cascading exterior landscape spaces to connect back to the campus community. With its entry on the third of five floors, much of the building’s mass is largely concealed from view.

Even with its refined frontage, the new building participates on the edge of the quad announcing its presence as a crisp, modern and dignified building among its traditional brick neighbors. The building embodies Lafayette’s unique spirit: an unassuming and beautifully crafted exterior with a deeply engaging interior. It is a vibrant destination that invites students, faculty and staff from across campus to enter and engage in new and exciting ways.

Given client’s mission to foster discussion and the exchange of ideas, the underlying theme for the building is a thriving academic community of research and teaching that serves both the sciences and humanities. Science departments formerly in insular and dispersed locations now thrive in a lively cross-disciplinary building, providing ample and inviting spaces for interdisciplinary engagement, collaboration, and ‘hands-on’ science.

A four-story ‘vertical commons’ with a meandering, sculptural stair at the heart links the academic programs and campus community spaces within. The spatially dynamic atrium, range of informal student spaces and cascading landscaped courtyards make this building a campus wide destination for the entire campus community.