BOSTON– Payette recently announced that the School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS) building on the campus of George Washington University (GWU) broke ground on Wednesday, May 16, 2012. At 115,542 GFA, the $75 million project is the first standalone home for the SPHHS and is the only school of public health in Washington, D.C.
Just blocks from the White House, the school draws heavily upon its unique D.C. location in the heart of the country’s “policy capital” to attract local legislators, practitioners and researchers to bring real-world perspective to public health education. While the university’s medical center was founded in 1824, the school itself was only established in 1997 and has never had a true “home.” Instead, its seven departments currently occupy space in various university buildings and several leased locations in and around the university’s Foggy Bottom campus. This project, a signature new building for the school, is intended to help create a singular identity to the general public.
“The School of Public Health will be a spectacular addition to the Washington Circle area, and is the fastest growing research arm of the university” said GWU University President Steven Knapp. “I think it is inherently a disciplinary school because it touches on so many areas that the university has strengths in, in law, in policy, in medical sciences, health sciences, in mathematics and statistics, and everything comes together in a field of public health.”
The seven-story building is organized into two distinct halves, with two additional stories located below grade. An efficient, 50-foot wide rectilinear bar at the rear of the site along 24th Street will house departmental administrative offices. Clad in architectural terracotta, it complements the scale and residential character of the Foggy Bottom neighborhood. Facing Washington Circle, the building’s classrooms and lecture halls will occupy a dramatic, glass enclosed eastern wing. In a significant departure from conventional practice, teaching spaces are set back from the building’s perimeter. An informal series of individual and group student activity and study spaces overlook the Circle – one of the capital’s most prominent traffic nodes – reinforcing the school’s unique presence as an institution of public health within the public realm of the city.
The project incorporates numerous sustainable features, including a green roof, native plantings, low-flow plumbing fixtures, lighting controls, C02 monitoring and numerous local, rapidly renewable and recycled content materials. The building’s HVAC systems consist of both active chilled beam and mass air displacement technologies, enabling the project to realize at least a 36% improvement over the ASHRAE 90.1 2007 baseline. The project will seek LEED Gold Certification at a minimum.
In attendance at the groundbreaking ceremony on May 16 were Mayor Vincent Gray, Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration Margaret Hamburg, University President Steven Knapp, and Dean Lynn Goldman, among others. The project team includes:
· Payette – design architect, landscape architect, and architect of record
· Ayers Saint Gross – associate architect
· Whiting- Turner – general contractor
· Affiliated Engineers, Inc. – mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire protection engineer
· Tadjer Cohen Edelson Associates – structural engineer
· Wiles Mensch Corporation – civil and site engineer
· Shen Milsom Wilke – acoustical and audiovisual consultant
· S.D. Keppler & Associates, LLC. – LEED consultant
· RW Sullivan Engineering – fire protection consultant
· Zipf Associates, Inc. – elevator consultant
· Rolf Jensen Associates – code consultant
· Ateller Ten – lighting designer
The project is expected to be complete by 2014.