YGH's Kelly Engineering Center Goes Gold

The Kelley Engineering Center at Oregon State University (a.k.a. "Moo U." - just kidding) has been awarded a Gold LEED certification by the U.S. Green Building Council, the first academic engineering building in the country to do so.

Yost Grube Hall Architecture designed the 153,000 square-foot structure, which provides research laboratories, classrooms and office space to more than 150 faculty members and 300 graduate students in the OSU School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Laboratories are usually huge energy hogs, so the effeciencies achieved here will really save a lot of power.

The building's centerpiece its central atrium, which acts distributes natural light into the interior portions of the building while also creating a centeral gathering space that spawns interaction and collaboration among engineering students and faculty. The roof diffuses and softens southern light. Some of the exterior brick portions of the surrounding building may look pedestrian viewed on their own, but the glass atrium is beautiful and functional.

I remember once a year or two ago seeing an early model of this building being tested at the University of Oregon/BetterBricks daylighting lab downtown with different light pattern simulations on an apparatus called the heliodon, to help the architects to anticipate every possible solar position, 24/7/365, and best maximize diffuse light while minimizing glare and the greenhouse effect. On even the wettest grayest winter days, the center of the Kelly in its light-filled atrium is going to feel like Miami Beach compared to inside of most buildings that depend on the dreary glare of fluorescent lights.

Comments

[Cliff]

I can't say that I've seen a roof profile quite like that before. I wonder if the slight curve was a direct result of those sun studies. Either way, it seems like a good refinement to a typical sawtooth clerestory.

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Congratulations to the engineering center of Oregon State University for winning the Gold LEED award shows That's one of the best in the academic field of engineering.