CU trustees' budget action helps Duffield Hall take planned shape

An architectural artist's watercolor drawing of the exterior of the planned Duffield Hall on the Engineering Quad. R. Hoven/Zimmer, Gunsul, Frasca Partnership

By David Brand

Thanks to the Cornell Board of Trustees, Duffield Hall, a three-story research building aimed at keeping Cornell a leader in nanotechnology, will retain the dimensions that its designers originally intended. This was assured when the board increased the Duffield Hall budget to $58.5 million from $53.5 million at its March 9 meeting.

The new budget reverses the concession to budgetary considerations made in December, when the building design was reduced by about 10,000 square feet on the north-south dimension on its site adjacent to Phillips Hall. However, there was faculty opposition to the removal of so much research space.

The increase in the budget for the facility, which had been recommended to the board by the university administration, was welcomed by Clifford Pollock, professor of electrical engineering and faculty program leader for Duffield Hall. "The recent increases in nanobiotechnology and nanotech-nology research funding at Cornell made it dramatically clear that program cuts in Duffield Hall would be short-sighted for the university," he said.

The restoration of the research space is yet another indication that this is a building design with deep faculty involvement. "From the initial outline of the program, through the siting and now in the detail design, faculty have actively engaged in the discussions and decisions," noted Pollock. Indeed, three faculty teams are advising not only on the building design but also on the development of safety and management policies and on the facelift to be given the Engineering Quad at an additional estimated cost of $3 million to $4 million.

Duffield Hall will be one of the nation's most sophisticated research and teaching facilities for nanotechnology -- the construction of devices at the molecular level -- and the development of new materials. The Cornell Nanofabrication Facility (CNF) in Knight Laboratory will be re-established in Duffield, as will the new Nanobiotechnology Center, which seeks to create a partnership between academic research and industry by using microfabrication to manipulate biological systems. And the Center for Materials Research will receive new, high-quality research space.

The Duffield Hall project now is in the phase of design known as design-development. University planners hope to have the design completed and to be seeking construction bids in about a year.

"In January 2001 we should be bidding
this project," said project manager Bob Stundtner. "That would have us moving into Duffield in early 2003. We have a very aggressive schedule."

Last November, the architects, the Los Angeles office of Zimmer, Gunsul, Frasca Partnership of Portland, Ore., delivered the schematic designs for the building. From these, a series of architectural watercolors were commissioned that show the context of the 150,000-square-foot facility positioned on the northeast side of the Engineering Quad directly adjacent to and west of Phillips Hall and following the length of the building to Upson Hall.

University architect and project executive Peter Karp noted that the architects have been very careful to reduce the visual mass of the building so that it relates more to the scale of the buildings around it. The watchword, he said, "has been to keep the scale down visually as much as possible and to respect the proportions of other buildings.

"We are very proud of this building from all points of view. It's a remarkable piece of
architecture and a remarkable piece of technology," Karp said.

Paramount in the building's design are three atriums, each somewhat smaller than the Sage Hall atrium and all ingeniously isolated from Duffield's clean rooms and most of the labs. The atriums are the central open spaces in Duffield, beginning from north to south with Phillips atrium, which opens into the airy, central Winter Garden, which in turn leads to the Upson atrium. Enclosed bridges (wide enough for tables) connect the end atriums to Phillips and Upson halls.

Walking into Duffield from Campus Road and East Avenue, the visitor first will enter a vestibule 8 feet above the atrium. The visitor either can descend to the atrium or ascend stairs leading to the second and third floors. The Winter Garden will have quiet sitting areas adjacent to windows looking down into CNF, creating a sense of openness.

"These are interaction spaces," said Pollock. "Duffield is meant to bring together people from all over campus working in nanotechnology."

Said Karp: "The whole thing has been designed so that the public spaces will be very lively, bright and interactive spaces for students and others."

The atriums' most notable feature will be the light that will fill the open spaces from clerestory windows and skylights. The Winter Garden also will have French doors that in summer will open onto an Engineering Quad patio. To Stundtner one of the most spectacular of all vistas will be the approach to Duffield through a gap between Upson and Phillips. "You will be looking through two glass walls of the atrium that will frame the great oak in the quad," he said.

Light also will predominate in another of the building's features, unique for the Cornell campus: a third-floor, overhanging colloquium room with skylight and balcony.

The largest gift pledged to the project is a $20 million donation from David A. Duffield (B.Eng. '63, M.B.A. '64), founder of PeopleSoft Inc. The balance of financial support will come from other alumni, individuals and corporations.

More information may be found on the Duffield Hall Project web site.