The LEED Gold Alan Magee Scaife Hall of Engineering is a 6-story research facility located at a prominent corner of Carnegie Mellon’s campus. Bound by Schenley Park to the south, a deeply sloped hillside to the west, and the original campus buildings to the north and east, the new building forms a contemporary cornerstone and gateway to the historic campus core. The 85,000 square-foot building is home to the Mechanical Engineering Department and comprises labs, offices, classrooms, collaboration workspace, and a café. The three-volume massing is carefully considered, merging zoning restrictions, Pittsburgh’s steep slope development requirements, surrounding context, and programmatic requirements.
A two-story lower volume is strategically and efficiently integrated into the hillside to house laboratories. The deep below grade footprint allows for an efficient but flexible lab program layout and controlled conditions by taking advantage of ground coupling, reducing the heating and cooling demand. The labs are designed to support innovative research in a variety of subjects and include wet and dry lab space, a drone arena, robotics lab, open wet lab, and BSL-1 lab.
Two additional volumes float above the labs, unify the spaces between adjacent buildings, and form a landscaped courtyard where the teams of all engineering programs can socialize and collaborate. A large operable door extends this communal space to the inside where a much-needed café and lounge support student and faculty interaction. Teaching facilities, including flexible classrooms and lecture spaces, anchor the first two levels of the building, while offices occupy the upper levels. Woven around and within the building’s circulation are flexible spaces for collaboration and study, creating an active hub for research, teaching, and learning.
The design team completed a whole-building life-cycle assessment (WBLCA) to quantitatively measure the environmental impact of the chosen building materials, assemblies, and systems across their full life cycle, from material extraction and manufacturing through use and end of life.
Overall, the building will use 25% less energy than ASHRAE 90.1-2010 baseline for buildings of similar size and use (calculated by energy cost). The university is a direct owner of an off-site wind farm, offsetting all campus electricity, thus, 43% of Scaife Hall’s energy use will be offset by renewable energy. The net pEUI accounting for renewable energy is 77 kBtu/sf, a 66% reduction from the AIA 2030 baseline. A green roof mitigates stormwater runoff, reducing heat island effect, and promoting biodiversity.
The project selected 48 products with Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), Health Product Declarations (HPDs), and third-party certifications, like Declare or Cradle-to-Cradle, as part of a commitment to specifying materials and products that report their ingredients, which is imperative in creating transparency in the industry and allowing designers to make informed decisions. To complement material selection, a green cleaning program was introduced to improve indoor air quality and minimize off gassing of building materials. High recycled content materials were specified and used to further decrease the environmental impact of construction materials. Locally sourced construction materials were also used to reduce the new facility’s embodied carbon.
Category:Green ArchitectureYear:2025Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USAArchitects:KieranTimberlakeLandscape Architects:OLINGeneral Contractor:PJ Dick Inc.Client:Carnegie Mellon UniversityPhotographers:Sahar Coston-Hardy / ESTO
