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Science and Engineering Quad,
Stanford University

Palo Alto, California
Completed 1999

University campus development with four science / engineering buildings, landscaped quadrangle and freestanding connective elements
 

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This project is strategically located between the main quadrangle of Stanford University and a dormitory precinct in a developing part of the campus. The 4-building complex includes the Electrical Engineering Building, Statistics Building, McCullough Annex (housing the Laboratory for Advanced Materials Research); and the aluminum-clad Regional Teaching Facility, all linked by freestanding connective elements around a landscaped courtyard.

Providing advanced facilities for the various disciplines, each building was designed to meet the individual requirements of its occupants. The programmatically complex buildings are distinct, but unified by an integrative design strategy that plays off the nineteenth-century campus plan of Frederick Law Olmsted to provide both grassy and paved areas for relaxation, study, social interaction and importantly, axial connections. The large size of the site and its key location presented the opportunity — the obligation — to enhance not only the buildings directly involved, but the campus as a whole.

The complex complements the existing university by means of a shared palette and scale, reinforcing the link with new bridges, walkways and view corridors to other parts of the campus. At the same time the new quad possesses its own identity as a work of modern architecture. Notwithstanding the individual attributes of the four buildings — most dramatically, the glass prow of EE Building or the aluminum RTF which curves to invite entry — much of this identity derives from the central courtyard, the steel and fabric arcades and the primacy of open space over buildings.

Major Components

4-story Electrical Engineering Building (116,500 s/f) housing offices, laboratories, classrooms, lounge areas, interior / exterior dining areas

2-story McCullough Annex (53,100 s/f) housing laboratories with H7 (unlimited toxic / limited flammable materials) occupancy, with underground link and roofed open bridge to offices and other facilities in existing McCullough Building

2-story RTF (29,000 s/f) housing 3 classrooms, 475-seat lecture hall with rotating platform for experiment preparation, 200-seat lecture hall with full A/V facilities for distance learning; a campus ECH (electronic communications hub) with dedicated entrance

2-story Statistics Building (22,800 s/f) housing lecture room, 2 computer classrooms, library, offices, lounge

Quadrangle and other landscaped areas

Connective elements (9) and pavilions (2): approx. 1,000 linear feet total

Pedestrian bridge at south end of site

Pei Cobb Freed & Partners services

Programming assistance, architectural design, design and production documents

Associate Architect

MBT Architecture, San Francisco, CA

Structural

Forell / Elsesser Engineers, Inc. San Francisco, CA

Mechanical / Electrical

Flack & Kurtz, San Francisco, CA

Landscape

Olin Partnership, Philadelphia, PA

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