Rising from the slope of a large bluff on the foothills of Utah’s imposing Wasatch Mountains, Brigham Young University’s new Life Sciences Building reveals the inspiration of its remarkable setting.
Multiple facets and elevations climb dramatically as if shaped by the same tectonic and erosional forces that have created massive escarpments and deeply incised canyons on the surrounding landscape. From inside, the expansive windows reveal that landscape while flooding learning, meeting and research spaces with natural light.
It’s a perfect metaphor for the College of Life Science’s mission to reveal the natural world to the human intellect.
This video gives a good sense of all the building has to offer. The camera “flies” through varied interior spaces – including teaching and research labs, auditoriums, corridors and common areas, a rooftop greenhouse and a massive central atrium. Exterior shots show how the complexly terraced profile echoes the mountainous landscape overlooking the BYU campus. From both inside and outside the building, you can see a prominent “spine” rising in stages through the center of the building, much like a ridgeline defining the center of a mountain’s mass.
Architectural Nexus, the firm selected to design the building, asked LCG Façades to get involved in the project early, providing design engineering expertise for the glass curtain wall and metal panel systems that would serve as the building envelope.
Ted Derby, business development manager at LCG Façades, says that a strong, lightweight cladding material was needed to meet the building’s seismic requirements: The massive Wasatch Fault that created the rugged setting is still active today. At the same time, a pressure-equalized rainscreen was required due to Utah’s adoption of the 2012 IBC Building Code.
To meet these needs, LCG Façades designed its exclusive SL-2200 rainscreen system and chose ALPOLIC® aluminum composite materials, fabricated at LCG’s 40,000 square-foot facility in Salt Lake City.
One of the key factors in achieving the project’s budgetary and quality goals, Derby says, was that “We could control most of the materials that were going on the job through our fabrication facility that allows us to fabricate curtain wall systems as well as metal composite panel systems.”
The central “spine” towers above like an alpine peak.
ALPOLIC® materials are most visible on the building’s “spine,” rising in a stepped fashion to tower above lower elevations on either side. Here, panels finished in a silver mica evoke the great blue limestone formation that caps the spine of the Wasatch Mountains. The same fire-retardant ACM panels in a custom blue mica bring hues of a summer sky to window openings and other reveals.
If you can’t be hiking or skiing the Wasatch, studying their flora and fauna in this evocative building may be the next best thing. In the new BYU Life Sciences Building, ALPOLIC® materials are truly helping to do nature proud.
Contact Information:
Phone Number: 1.800.422.7270
Fax Number: 757.436.1896
Email: info@ALPOLIC.com
Website: www.alpolic-americas.com
Related Stories
| Oct 12, 2010
Holton Career and Resource Center, Durham, N.C.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Special Recognition. Early in the current decade, violence within the community of Northeast Central Durham, N.C., escalated to the point where school safety officers at Holton Junior High School feared for their own safety. The school eventually closed and the property sat vacant for five years.
| Oct 12, 2010
Guardian Building, Detroit, Mich.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Special Recognition. The relocation and consolidation of hundreds of employees from seven departments of Wayne County, Mich., into the historic Guardian Building in downtown Detroit is a refreshing tale of smart government planning and clever financial management that will benefit taxpayers in the economically distressed region for years to come.
| Oct 12, 2010
Gartner Auditorium, Cleveland Museum of Art
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Gartner Auditorium was originally designed by Marcel Breuer and completed, in 1971, as part of his Education Wing at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Despite that lofty provenance, the Gartner was never a perfect music venue.
| Oct 11, 2010
HGA wins 25-Year Award from AIA Minnesota
HGA Architects and Engineers won a 25-Year Award from AIA Minnesota for the Willow Lake Laboratory.
| Sep 30, 2010
Luxury hotels lead industry in green accommodations
Results from the American Hotel & Lodging Association’s 2010 Lodging Survey showed that luxury and upper-upscale hotels are most likely to feature green amenities and earn green certifications. Results were tallied from 8,800 respondents, for a very respectable 18% response rate. Questions focused on 14 green-related categories, including allergy-free rooms, water-saving programs, energy management systems, recycling programs, green certification, and green renovation.
| Sep 21, 2010
Forecast: Existing buildings to earn 50% of green building certifications
A new report from Pike Research forecasts that by 2020, nearly half the green building certifications will be for existing buildings—accounting for 25 billion sf. The study, “Green Building Certification Programs,” analyzed current market and regulatory conditions related to green building certification programs, and found that green building remain robust during the recession and that certifications for existing buildings are an increasing area of focus.
| Sep 16, 2010
Gehry’s Santa Monica Place gets a wave of changes
Omniplan, in association with Jerde Partnership, created an updated design for Santa Monica Place, a shopping mall designed by Frank Gehry in 1980.
