ANNAPOLIS, Md.—Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), Turner Construction Company, and the United States Naval Academy (USNA) recently celebrated the completion and opening of the USNA Cyber Studies Building – Hopper Hall. The facility, a design-build project led by Turner and designed by SOM, is the first building at a U.S. military academy dedicated to the study of cyber security. The project is designed to achieve LEED Silver certification from the USGBC.

Named for Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, a pioneer in computer science and one of the original developers of the world’s first commercial electronic computer, the building is the first academic structure named after a woman at a major U.S. service academy. It signifies a major step forward in the evolution of the U.S. military – almost five decades after the last academic USNA structure was erected, Hopper Hall advances a rapidly modernizing curriculum, one that will foster the next generation of military leadership.

The USNA campus is home to a diverse range of architectural styles, from Beaux-Arts to modernism. The site of Hopper Hall, at the edge of Isherwood Terrace along the Severn River, is located among the modernist Nimitz Library and Rickover Hall. The new building’s architecture is inspired by its neighbors, both in its massing and its materiality. Hopper Hall features a horizontal massing and a regular grid of punched windows that resemble the designs of the adjacent buildings, and its precast concrete facade echoes the color and texture of the stone and concrete surrounding Isherwood Terrace.

On the ground floor, Hopper Hall extends Isherwood Terrace into a two-story, 6,000-square-foot communal space called the “Bridge.” This informal lobby can transition into an event hall for exhibitions, presentations, and other ceremonies. The space begins at the building’s entrance and ends near an outdoor staircase leading to the waterfront, and it is aligned with the center of the terrace. This alignment, coupled with a full-height curtain wall on both ends, preserves historic views of the water.

Hopper Hall houses four departments within the cyber security discipline: Cyber Science, Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Weapons Robotics Controls. Approximately 70 percent of the six-story building is utilized for instruction and research within these departments, with a combined 68 classrooms, seminar spaces, laboratories, and research facilities. These rooms are supplemented by faculty offices, as well as a cafe and a multitude of additional spaces that bolster education in both cyber security and other USNA curricula.

The building includes a power studio lab, a green energy lab, an optics lab, an anechoic chamber, and an auditorium beside the faculty offices. It also augments the Robotics and Control Engineering major with an aerial robotics testing facility and, on the top level, an observatory serves as a valuable new resource for coursework in physics and other majors. On the ground level, two aquatic testing facilities – the Surface and Underwater Robotics Facility (SURF) and the Shared Waterfront Activities Lab (WAL) – are equipped with highly advanced technology, including sand filtration, sanitizing systems, video-capturing equipment, a three-dimensional motion-tracking system, and a monorail capable of lifting submersible vehicles weighing up to two tons.

The LEED® Silver certification will be targeted primarily by optimizing air quality, water use, energy performance, its window-to-wall ratio, and in its resiliency measures. The building’s resiliency features navigate the technical challenges of the site: Hopper Hall lies on reclaimed land within the 100-year floodplain. As a perimeter building, it had to be blast-resistant and floodproof, and incorporate a programmatic resiliency. This resiliency is achieved, in part, through the building’s stacking, in which the aquatic-based labs are located in the base of the building – where the facade is most solid – while the data labs, faculty offices, and instructional and event spaces are housed on the higher floors.

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) is a collective of architects, designers, engineers and planners, responsible for some of the world’s most technically and environmentally advanced buildings, and significant public spaces. Turner is a North America-based, international construction services company founded in 1902.

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LOS ANGELES AND NEW YORK, N.Y., April 13, 2020—Reflecting its innovative, multidisciplinary, approach to sustainable campuses, buildings and places, the integrated engineering consultancy Buro Happold has announced a number of major new sustainability-driven higher education projects underway at colleges and universities across the United States that address the climate emergency the world is currently facing.

Developed in collaboration with leading architecture firms – including Grimshaw Architects, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), Moore Ruble Yudell, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (BCJ), KieranTimberlake, Behnisch Architekten, Snøhetta, Henning Larsen and others – Buro Happold’s new university projects range in scale from standalone academic buildings to larger educational complexes to entire multiphase campus master plans. Buro Happold also leads campus sustainability plans, a critical new specialty. The firm also brings decades of experience with environmental modeling, strategic mobility planning, engineered systems design, and pioneering use of structural materials and construction methods for iconic, highly sustainable campus buildings.

Engaged with a number of higher education clients, Buro Happold is helping to develop comprehensive sustainability plans, such as at the University of North Carolina, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of California, San Diego. The firm is also providing expertise on sustainability and wellbeing, outdoor thermal comfort, and pedestrian flow modeling for College of the Desert’s new Palm Springs campus.

As a result of the firm’s commitment to a net-zero carbon future and its focus on human wellbeing, Buro Happold has emerged as the leading provider of sustainability services for forward-looking colleges and universities throughout the country. The firm’s success in the higher education sector with a number of repeat clients is underscored by a multidisciplinary approach to planning and design coupled with demonstrated expertise managing complex project stakeholder relationships across all scales.

Notable recent university work includes:

Washington University in St. Louis.: Buro Happold has provided integrated engineering services that incorporate the principles of sustainable design with attention to energy efficiency, low-impact materials, reuse and recycling, quality and durability, and health and wellness for nine structures across this campus.

Among these notable works, Buro Happold provided extensive computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and egress modeling for the Olin Business School. Designed by Moore Ruble Yudell with Mackey Mitchell Architects, it is one of the first passively smoke-vented atriums in the United States. Most recently, Buro Happold’s scope of work on the 18-acre East End Campus included partnering again with Moore Ruble Yudell and Mackey Mitchell to design Jubel Hall as well as with architects KieranTimberlake on four structures including two glazed pavilions, Weil Hall, and an expansion of Kemper Art Museum.

Arizona State University, Phoenix: Buro Happold is providing integrated engineering services including structures and mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) systems along with energy modeling, lighting and daylighting design, and sustainability consulting for the 55,000-square-foot Thunderbird School of Global Management. Designed by Moore Ruble Yudell and Jones Studio, the building is in construction and expected to open in 2021, and represents just one of three projects at ASU involving Buro Happold’s full multidisciplinary services. Others include the Ennead-designed ASU Beus Center for Law & Society in downtown Phoenix, recently completed and pursuing LEED Gold, as well as Grimshaw’s new Interdisciplinary Science and Technology Building 7, which is scheduled to open in late 2021 and is pursuing LEED Gold.

University of California, Los Angeles: With 30 projects on University of California campuses and 16 at UCLA alone, Buro Happold has provided integrated expertise on a wide range of facilities on campus including general classrooms, professional schools, state-of- the-art labs, and housing. Most recently, the firm delivered MEP and fire-protection engineering, IT services, lighting design, daylight modeling and energy modeling for the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science’s new laboratory complex, housing the 60,000-square-foot Western Institute of Nanotechnology on Green Engineering and the 90,000-square-foot Computer Science department. Along with significant energy cost savings, Buro Happold also specified solar renewable and water-recycling technologies to dramatically minimize energy and water consumption for the LEED Gold- certified complex.

Cornell Tech, Roosevelt Island, N.Y.: Buro Happold provided feasibility studies, energy analysis and passive systems design as well as MEP and structural engineering and lighting design for The House at Cornell Tech, a 26-floor housing tower designed by Handel Architects, that is the world’s largest and tallest Passive House-certified residential building. The House is part of Cornell University’s larger urban island campus, which Buro Happold is also helping develop according to the university’s wider commitment to innovative sustainability. Buro Happold also recently partnered with international architecture firm Snøhetta to deliver the Verizon Executive Education Center – a conference center “suited for visionary thinkers” that blends high design and human-centered technology, expected to open this year.

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GOLETA, Calif. — Tenaya Towers at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) was recently honored at the 2018 Sustainable Innovation Awards. The project, a pair of six-story towers, received a Merit Award in the Energy and Atmosphere category. The Sustainable Innovation Awards (SIA) program is hosted by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Los Angeles chapter and recognizes projects that demonstrate exemplary performance that goes above and beyond standard rating systems.

Considered to be Los Angeles’ Oscars of green building, the SIAs affirm a project team’s commitment to a sustainable built environment and reflect the chapter’s emphasis on energy and water savings, air quality, good design, community engagement and equity. The SIAs are open to projects certified under any sustainability rating system.

“The Sustainable Innovation Awards recognize projects that go above and beyond credit achievement,” said SIA Co-chair Patti Harburg-Petrich of BuroHappold. “The project teams honored this year employed creative strategies that we hope will inspire the design and construction community to push the limits of standard practice. Thank you to all who submitted projects for consideration.”

Located on UCSB’s campus in Goleta, Calif. the Tenaya Towers provide space for student housing, study lounges, recreation rooms, and a market that is open to the school community as well as the public.

Tenaya Towers contain student housing and a convenience store that serves the university and adjacent community. Living areas open onto balconies that overlook an outdoor plaza, while bedrooms are situated away from outdoor activity. Study lounges and recreation rooms are centrally located to support academic and social life.

Perforated screens on the building facades provide shading, help keep the buildings cool, and serve as protective barriers. Larger openings in the screens enhance daylighting and views. Additional screens on operable windows in bedrooms and study lounges provide shading and act as guardrails for each unit. A freestanding pavilion in the plaza contains a recreation room and study lounge for students.

The towers define a central outdoor plaza that total 105,000 square feet, Certified LEED Platinum, the towers feature natural ventilation, rooftop solar hot water collectors, and greywater use. Sustainable features in the site plan include a stormwater management system with bioswales, bio-retention and mechanical filters to protect adjacent wetlands, and ground cover with drought-tolerant plants.

Tenaya Towers also features natural ventilation, rooftop solar hot water collectors, and greywater use. The building envelopes are carefully designed to maximize thermal performance, contributing to energy consumption that is 20 percent below California’s Title 24 baseline. The efficient use of building materials also helped reduce the project’s carbon footprint.

The Tenaya Towers are part of the UCSB San Joaquin Apartments and Precinct Improvements Project, a campus master plan led by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, LLP (SOM). SOM worked together with three other architecture firms to design the various residences and dining commons—a collaborative approach that infuses the project with architectural diversity. SOM’s Los Angeles office designed Tenaya Towers, Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects and Kevin Daly Architects designed additional residential complexes, and Kieran Timberlake designed the dining commons.  

Harper Construction, BuroHappold, Stantec, Sherwood Design Engineers, Tom Leader Studio, Horton Lees Brogden Lighting Design, Newson Brown, and Jensen Hughes are also listed as part of the project team.

“The projects and people honored by the Sustainable Innovation Awards exemplify thought leadership and creativity in their design solutions to site and building challenges,” said SIA Co- chair Amelia Feichtner of the City of Santa Monica. “It is inspiring that our community is advancing sustainability in a wide range of project scales and in both private and public development.”

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