YALE UNIVERSITY

Yale Anthropology Building – New Haven, CT

Project Features:

Complete demolition, renovation, and addition to the Yale Anthropology Building.

Yale University’s Anthropology Department consolidated its teaching and research labs, faculty offices, seminar rooms, and administration offices into a single facility at 158 Whitney Avenue. Originally built in 1835 as a Greek-style residence, Yale acquired the historic structure in 1923.

The design and construction team extensively restored, structurally reinforced, and set the 19th-Century building on a new foundation. This project also updated its interior to meet current health and safety standards using new mechanical, electrical, and fire safety systems with state-of-the-art energy management and controls systems.

The expanded and renovated facility supports high-tech graduate and undergraduate programs with dissection labs, specimen storage, academic teaching spaces, modern classrooms, and administrative offices.

Project Challenges:

• The biggest challenge was coordinating the MEP to fit above the ceilings dictated by the historic old building.

Sterling Chemistry Laboratory – New Haven, CT

Project Features:

Renovation involved gutting the center of a historic 93-year-old building and constructing a two-story addition completely surrounded by the existing walls and corridors.

The three-year project transformed the inside of the Gothic building into a space for influential physicists, chemists, and biologists to collaborate and create in this state of the art 159,000 square- foot complex and a new 31,600 square-foot addition. This new space features expanded teaching labs, with new power and data to lab equipment and enhanced electrical systems.

Project Challenges:

• Due to the low slab height of the existing building, the second-floor labs required an open ceiling design. All mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) is exposed, which required careful coordination in order to fit.
• The complexity and electrical density of this project required extensive BIM (Building Information Modeling) to coordinate all the MEP trades in 3D.

Yale Center For British Arts – New Haven, CT

Project Features:

The 83,000 square-foot Yale Center for British Art was the last building designed by renowned architect Louis Kahn. Great care was taken to preserve the original fabric of the building.

As an example, the building code required additional exit signs, and to help keep the aesthetics of the building consistent, we had them custom made to match the existing 1970’s models. The construction manager was awarded a Connecticut Building Congress Project Team Award for the project.

Project Challenges:

• Coordinating the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems to fit above the ceilings in order to preserve the historic nature of this building.
• Replaced the original substation while keeping the building powered and occupied.
• All work was scheduled around moves to keep all the art in the building during the renovation.