Project Description
This 104,000sf project called for additional research and office space for the Department of Biology, and the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, as well as, general classrooms and a lecture hall for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In addition to the program needs, the building maintains and extends the existing linear organization of the campus paths, allees, and vistas along with their attendant pedestrian movement. Technically, the building was designed to be flexible to the extent that any department in the University could utilize it for research.
The plan form results from organizing laboratories and offices along a corridor creating a thin east-west “bar” building which is connected back to Wilson Hall with a north-south link. The classrooms, lecture hall and mechanical plant are organized into a semi-autonomous block located at the southeast end of the lab bar. In order to facilitate pedestrian traffic, arched passages are located in the north-south link and at the classroom connection. The architectural character of the new building draws its inspiration from the traditional Elizabethan Gothic expression of the original campus buildings. Materially, Missouri Red rubble granite is accented with buff Indiana limestone by means of string courses, copings, quoins, arches, and bay windows. A mottled green slate roof supports brick chimneys which, in fact, are the exhaust stacks for the laboratories. The design of the interiors results directly from employing a modular system for organizing the various utilities serving the labs.
