Our newly completed Rockwell Integrated Sciences Center at Lafayette College recently received 3 major national awards including an AIA COTE® Top Ten, AIA Education Facility Design Award in the category of Excellence and a SCUP/AIA-CAE Excellence in Architecture, New Building in the category of Honor.
Photo Credit: Robert Benson Photography
As a LEED Platinum certified and high-performance building, being recognized by AIA COTE® Top Ten, the industry’s best-known awards program for sustainable design excellence, is a strong confirmation of our commitment to design buildings that are both sustainable and beautiful, while being accessible by all.
Invited by AIAU, the AIA’s online education center for architects and designers, we were pleased to join this year’s course Performing Beautifully: Lessons from 2021 COTE® Top Ten Award-winning Teams and share our lessons learned, feedback and insights. Safely produced in-house about our entry, this course is free and available to all. Principal-in-Charge Bob Schaeffner, FAIA, Design Principal Mark Oldham, AIA and Principal and Building Scientist Andrea Love, AIA, LEED Fellow participated and covered 3 main areas:
Design for Integration:
- What is the big idea or innovative thinking that propelled this project to Design Excellence?
- What did you learn on this project that could inform or influence your future projects that you’d like to share with other design professionals?
- How did life-cycle thinking affect specific design decisions and drive a more climate-responsive design?
Our project is listed under the Climate chapter with commentary from Julie Hiromoto, AIA, and Michelle Amt, AIA.
This project reads right and does a lot of good data and process sharing. Great job with ventilation and air monitoring. Good example for how you introduce the modern into the more historical campuses. Glazing is good; placement, daylighting, bird safety were all pretty seamlessly crafted in.
Juror Comment
More than a Science Center, the Rockwell Integrated Sciences Center is an exciting campus-wide destination that enlivens a formerly neglected quadrangle. This cleverly sited, unassuming and beautifully crafted building with a deeply engaging interior is both a respectful neighbor and an inviting beacon within its cherished campus setting.
Photo Credit: Robert Benson Photography
We hope this course offers useful content and inspires you at many levels.
Watch it today at https://aiau.aia.org/courses/performing-beautifully-2021-cote-top-10
Cape Cod Community College’s Frank and Maureen Wilkens Science and Engineering Center is a net-positive energy building designed to transform the heart of campus.
The project approaches sustainability through a holistic and global approach, implementing a range of moves including passive solar shading overhangs, air-source heat pumps, high performance materials with low embodied carbon and the expansion of the range of thermal comfort and lighting power density. Combined with on-site photovoltaics, the project achieves net-positive energy use.
The project’s thermally modified wood rainscreen façade is a study of the modern expression of vernacular Cape Cod architecture while reducing embodied carbon. Early lifecycle assessments identified the immense carbon savings of wood over fiber cement. The design team did not stop there, furthering reductions by peeling back unnecessary finishes like carpet and ceilings. Together, these decisions enabled a 19% reduction in embodied carbon.
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