Singer Hall is a 159,000 SF interdisciplinary science facility for Swarthmore College, a highly-ranked liberal arts institution with a renowned arboretum campus. Based on Quaker values, the College envisioned an interdisciplinary environment that would enrich the overall community, respect the campus context and establish a unique contemporary sense of place in context of exemplary environmental stewardship.
The biology, engineering and psychology program includes teaching/research laboratories, general campus classrooms, seminar rooms, offices, and specialty spaces. Collaborative spaces serving as institutional engagement environments include a main commons, open study, lounge, and group study spaces.
The campus is organized around a grand sloping lawn with Parrish Hall as its iconic terminus. On an upper plateau beyond, the main North Quad unifies a series of surrounding intimate courts including the lush Nason Garden. Singer Hall weaves into this context organized with an L-shaped lab wing that embraces and emphatically defines the north and east edges of this special garden. Faculty offices are aggregated and linearly arrayed as an independent “garden pavilion” conceptually placed within Nason Garden to form an internal sky-lit green-wall commons in-between.
Each Singer Hall orientation is distinguished by entries paired with distinct departmental identity spaces while enhancing porosity and engagement with surrounding context. The south-facing garden commons enables overall campus outreach while the three other façades feature a biology introductory lab to the west, an engineering student high-bay to the north, and a psychology child development clinic to the east. Varied and regionally based micro-ecosystem landscapes surround the building further distinguishing each orientation while synergistically contributing to the arboretum campus’s didactic mission.
Form faceting with varied window spacing layered with wood behind and a linear granite facade, complemented by zinc upper levels, were employed to mitigate scale, and respectfully engage the surrounding stone-dominated campus fabric.
To strategically align with the College’s values, Swarthmore created their own unique sustainability framework with Singer Hall as the first campus project to realize these high standards. Sustainability strategies included dual heat recovery wheels, high-performance facades with sun shading, rainwater harvesting and radiant flooring amongst many others.