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Caltech's new Resnick Sustainability Center gets scientific from the outside in

2024-11-13T16:58:00-05:00

Caltech’s new Resnick Sustainability Center (RSC) has opened after the completion of an 80,000-square-foot design produced by the LA-based Yazdani Studio of CannonDesign.

The project, which had been marketed as an interdisciplinary and cohesive "makerspace" for Caltech scientists and engineering students, stands out thanks to an innovative building envelope shaped by an "undulating glass skim" that's noticeably distinct from other academic buildings on campus.

Image courtesy of Cannon Design

A language of diagonal sunscreen frits covering a low-E coated glass curtain wall and its supporting mass timber "gridshell" in the facade contribute to the building's impugned profile against the presence of the aforementioned older structures. The use of timber as a structural and aesthetic component also blends the atrium and walkways with a concrete shell core housing suites of research laboratories and academic spaces to make an elaborate yet wholly scientific composition from the outside i...

HOK designs quantum research facility for Caltech with glass prism facade

2023-08-25T11:41:00-04:00

Caltech has held the groundbreaking ceremony for the HOK-designed Ginsburg Center for Quantum Precision Measurement in Pasadena, California. Upon its projected completion in 2025, the center is set to become “one of the world’s most advanced hubs for studying quantum science and technology.”

Image credit: HOK

The four-story building will house research offices, meeting rooms, and dedicated collaboration areas, with laboratories strategically located at the basement level to minimize disturbances from noise and vibrations. Externally, a transparent facade on the south and west sides is designed to “suggest a prism or the bending of spacetime, an allusion to research that will take place in the building.”

In an effort to foster community and collaboration, parts of the ground floor are recessed to provide room for greenery and open spaces for outdoor gatherings. The design further encourages interaction with glass panel doors and a breezeway linked to a neighboring seminar room, enabli...

Yazdani Studio's Caltech sustainability center is making progress

2023-04-13T15:28:00-04:00

Nearly one year after breaking ground in Pasadena, construction is in full swing for the Resnick Sustainability Center on the Caltech campus. [...] When completed, the new complex will serve as the physical hub of the Resnick Sustainability Institute, which has existing at Caltech since 2009.

Following a $750 million donation from The Wonderful Company owners Lynda and Stewart Resnick in 2019 to Caltech, plans to construct a new 80,000-square-foot research facility were put in motion. Designed by Yazdani Studio, the Resnick Sustainability Resource Center broke ground in May 2022 and is now rising along the west side of the school’s campus.

The building, distinct with its undulating glass façade and mass timber grid shell, will be home to critical research in solar and climate science, energy, biofuels, decomposable plastics, and more.

Previously on Archinect: Yazdani Studio designs sustainability research center built with mass timber for Caltech

The Center will house a biosphere engineering facility, a solar science and catalysis center, a remote sensing center, and lecture and interactive learning spaces. The structure is also designed to be the greenest building on the campus, with systems that limit water consumption, interior finishes that prioritize renewable and ...

Yazdani Studio designs sustainability research center built with mass timber for Caltech

2021-06-03T17:36:00-04:00

In September 2019, Lynda and Stewart Resnick, owners of LA-based The Wonderful Company, donated $750 million to Caltech to support further environmental sustainability research. This enabled plans to construct a new 80,000-square-foot facility called the Resnick Sustainability Resource Center. Yazdani Studio, the experimental arm of CannonDesign, is behind the building’s design.

The Resnick Sustainability Resource Center will be home to critical research in solar science, climate science, energy, biofuels, decomposable plastics, water and environmental resources, ecology and biosphere engineering, and more. Key spaces within the building include a biosphere engineering facility, a solar science and catalysis center, a remote sensing center, a translational science facility, teaching labs, and lecture and interactive learning spaces.

The facility is designed to be the greenest building on the campus, built with materials that reduce its carbon footprint. The building’s facade takes...