SCUP/AIA-CAE Excellence in Architecture for a New Building,
Merit Award

Princeton University for Frick Chemistry Laboratory with Payette

©Warren Jagger Photography

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The new Frick Chemistry Laboratory is a state-of-the-science facility for academic chemistry research and teaching. It will help recruit top-tier faculty, attract more chemistry majors, and support the goal to become one of the country’s top chemistry programs.

The facility is designed to integrate general teaching and research, and to enhance collaboration and creativity. The programmatic response and systems integration are intrinsic to the architecture and detailing.

Institutional performance goals established with Princeton for site, energy, water, materials and indoor environmental quality informed the design response.

The jury said a “ . . . handsome building . . . gesture of separating building into blocks, creating street down the front is pretty admirable . . . there is an elegance here . . .”

Research laboratories on the upper three floors are designed as an open environment with desks along each edge oriented to natural light.

The glass-lined atrium, corridors and social spaces at the upper floor connections create a collegial atmosphere. As the programmatic center of the department, it creates a single unifying space linking activities and people. The lower level provides controlled environments for research.

The atrium also serves as an integrated component of the building systems, essential to its sustainable design approach of passive transference to reduce laboratory air requirements.

The site and landscape design knits the academic campus and natural forest with a new science plaza and the extension of the ravine plantings.

“The Frick Chemistry building integrates the institutional mission, campus planning goals, functional program and sustainable building and site technologies into a single, comprehensive expression. This is a deeply thoughtful, authentic and original building that makes a compelling contribution to the Princeton campus,” says University Architect Ron McCoy.

Project Team: Princeton University with Payette; also Hopkins Architects; Turner Construction Company; ARUP; Van Note – Harvey Associates; Nitsch Engineering; Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates; Acentech; GPR Planners Collaborative Jacobs Consultancy; R.W. Sullivan Engineering