World's Healthiest Lab Buildings in Harvard University
behnisch architekten has completed harvard university’s new science and engineering complex (SEC), a highly sustainable building that is set to open its doors to students in the fall of 2021. Located directly across the Charles river from the school’s historic Cambridge base, the SEC is the university’s latest significant addition to its developing ‘allston’ campus. The eight-level, 544,000-square-foot (50,539 sqm) building contains a diverse mix of laboratories as well as collaborative spaces. The building is clad with the world’s first hydroformed tensile façade system. in order to ensure the building’s energy performance, as well as the comfort of its occupants, behnisch architekten custom-designed the distinctive façade. The design team also incorporated water-based heating and cooling systems that use one-third the energy of comparable air-driven systems. In addition, large glass atria and highly glazed interior partitions transmit daylight deep into the heart of the building, while the roofs are topped with five acres of vegetated terraces. These methods helped reduce the complex’s carbon emissions by an estimated 42% and achieve LEED platinum status. By combining performance and aesthetics, the SEC seeks to set a design precedent for the campus as well as advance sustainability goals in general. The building creates a satisfying working atmosphere and is designed around the needs of the people occupying it, as if designed from the inside out. Together with Harvard, the architects have achieved living building challenge (LBC) petal certification in materials, beauty and equity. This was a substantial undertaking to analyze the chemical composition of almost 7,000 unique building materials in order to avoid using any that contain ‘red list’ compounds, such as PFAS, PVC, and PTFE. A tremendous amount of effort was put into making sure that the impacts of the building materials on people was minimized.
Tags : design INTERNATIONAL Sustainable Interior Harvard University Worlds Healthiest Lab Building behnisch architekten LEED Platinum Sustainability Goals