Project Description
The Micron Center for Materials Science recognizes its roots in the Boise State University campus context, but also provides a forward-looking, contemporary design that celebrates the cutting-edge teaching and research happening in the College of Engineering’s Materials Science program.
The project site is situated in a prominent location on University Drive, with the building responding to two major changes planned in the University’s campus master plan. The first, which is slated to occur in the next ten years, is the creation of a pedway / bikeway running diagonally southeast behind the Student Union Building. It will terminate at the intersection of University Drive and Manitou Street at the northeast corner of the project site. The long-range master plan calls for a STEM and physical sciences precinct, with Materials Science acting as a gateway building into the precinct.
One of the overarching goals of the project was to partner the building program, materials science research, with honesty in the building’s materiality. This is accomplished in several different ways. The building brings in the exterior façade elements at multiple locations throughout the building. The exterior brick wraps in throughout the classroom half of the building as well as the exterior metal soffits. The building utilizes exposed polished concrete floors that expose the aggregate, showing the base makeup of the concrete. The upper floors have end-grain flooring that shows the individual cross-sections of the timber.
Inside the northern half of the building, there is a large, 2-story gallery space that connects the Classrooms with the Lab side of the building. The gallery provides several different places for students & faculty to collaborate with a student tutorial space, plenty of seating options & space for a future café. The building facilitates innovation by connecting research spaces with teaching spaces. This allows for quick continuation from teaching the concepts to testing in practice.
Sustainable Design Features: (see additional attachment)
• Displacement ventilation in the classrooms and lecture hall that provides high volume, low velocity conditioned air that heats and cools the occupants, not the space.
• Energy Recovery Unit is installed which serves the lab block. This system exchanges the energy contained in the exhausted air from this portion of the building and uses it to precondition the incoming outdoor ventilation air.
• Others – see attachment
Overarching Design Principles
• The building serves as a teaching tool – using the building’s construction materials as a tool for explaining the concepts in materials science
• Truth in materials – constructing the project with materials that are what they seem—concrete, steel, wood, and glass.
• Building as a gathering place – serving the Boise State community by providing spaces for interaction both inside the building and out
o The site responds to the needs of the campus and the needs of the building by providing different types of spaces for formal and informal gatherings.
o Light-filled gallery connecting the teaching, offices, and research spaces which casual interactions between building all occupants
This project was completed in association with Anderson Mason Dale Architects.