Out of the summer heat, the outlines of Duffield Hall have emerged

The outlines of Duffield Hall, the $58.5 million high-tech research center being built on the Engineering Quad, have clearly emerged over the summer. The cantilevered colloquium room on the building's north end is now a prominent feature, and the exterior sheathing is being installed so that it is now evident where the glass curtain walls will provide great areas of light into the structure.

A view, last week, through the "penthouse" roof of Duffield Hall, the $58.5 million high-tech research center under construction on the university's Engineering Quad. Charles Harrington/University Photography

"There are wonderful views out across the quad and up East Avenue," said Duffield project director Robert Stundtner.

The construction project is right on schedule for completion in June 2004, and since the site work in front of Hollister, Kimball, Thurston and Bard halls is substantially complete, pedestrians are now permitted to walk among the buildings. Duffield's north atrium steel and most of the steel for the barrel roof are in place, interior partitions are being installed on all floors and installation of the roof is scheduled to start today, Aug. 22.

The goal, Stundtner said, is to have the building completely enclosed by Nov. 1 with the permanent skin of the building. "This will allow efficient heating of the building over the winter and keep the new interiors clean and dry as the construction continues. The glass may be a bit late because of the long lead time for custom glazing to be produced. Each panel is custom fit to its frame and can't be cut in the field," he said.

"Now that the concrete structure is in place, the critical path has moved to constructing the huge clean room on the first floor," said Stundtner. This will be part of the new Knight Laboratory, home of the Cornell Nanofabrication Facility (CNF). Stundtner notes that phase one of moving CNF from the existing Knight Lab to the new facility is on schedule for Sept. 1, 2003.

Indeed, workers already have begun implementing protocols so the space achieves the specified level of cleanliness, and eating, drinking and smoking are no longer allowed in Duffield. The clean room will be enclosed in preparation for the second phase of the "clean build" construction to ensure that the facility achieves the level of cleanliness required by CNF, Stundtner said.

The construction fence around the construction site will stay in place, allowing the engineering college students to complete murals depicting engineering themes that were started last spring for the Dragon Day parade. The plywood fence, which isolates the site, has become a useful communication tool.

In fact, the Duffield Hall "Sidewalk Supervisor" billboard won a silver medal in the 2002 Circle of Excellence Awards program of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) in the In-House Publication category covering communications undertaken entirely by campus personnel.

For more information, go to the Duffield Hall web site at http://www.duffield.cornell.edu , or contact the project team at duffield@cornell.edu.