Frick Laboratory
Subscribe now to instantly view this image
Subscribe to the Architects’ Journal (AJ) for instant access to the AJ Buildings Library, an online database of nearly 2,000 exemplar buildings in photographs, plans, elevations and details.
Already a subscriber? Sign in
Warren Jagger (website) Download Original
Chemistry research building designed to integrate general teaching and high-level research
The laboratory, which forms part of a southern expansion of the Princeton campus to create a science neighbourhood, has a simple, pragmatic internal arrangement.
Two parallel blocks, one housing research laboratories and teaching facilities the other accommodating offices meeting areas and conference rooms, flank a full height central atrium.
The atrium accommodates informal workplaces, a café with views out to the forest and high-level bridges that connect offices with laboratories, and is interlocked with adjacent offices by a series of open stairs threaded up through the building.
The building is naturally ventilated, large horizontally sliding windows – double-glazed and screened from insects and the sun – are part of a sophisticated high-efficiency external skin that enables incoming air to flow through the offices and, via the central atrium, to roof-level plant rooms, where heat is extracted prior to its recirculation within the laboratories.
The extensive glazing provides good levels of natural light, which further helps to reduce energy requirements. The structure of the office block also incorporates chilled beams to provide cooling.
Data
- Begun: Dec 2007
- Completed: 2011
- Floor area: 22,296m2
- Sector: Education
- Total cost: £120M
- Procurement: Construction management with GMP
- Address: Department of Chemistry, Princeton, NJ 08544, United States
Professional Team
- Architect: Hopkins Architects
- Client: Princeton University
- Executive architect: Payette Associates
- Structural engineer: Arup
- M&E consultant: Arup
- Landscape architect: Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates
- Main contractor: Turner Construction
- Laboratory planner: GPR