Dartmo.

Yale has been described as having more buildings with street addresses than any other school, proportionally at least. That might have been the case 15 years ago, but in the age of E911 address requirements, there should not be a campus building anywhere in the country without a street number.

This is interesting: Dartmouth’s Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center, which basically is part of the old Med School campus along College Street, had its street number changed from 76 College Street to 78 College Street (DAM Jan/Feb 2012, 14 (pdf)).

The college dedicated the Life Sciences Center on November 5 (The Dartmouth, Dartmouth Now, the Chronicle building blog). A new video shows a few of the large building’s interiors. The college Flickr feed has more.

Google’s Street View cyclist captured the LSC on a beautiful day about a year ago. Look at that copper! Dartmouth posted a video during construction explaining the building’s proposed LEED certification.

The center’s architects are Bohlin Cywinski Jackson. The firm designed the monumental Apple Stores, including the Fifth Avenue cube, which reopened November 4 after being reclad in larger panes of glass, as well as the Pixar Animation Studios headquarters. (Apple’s upcoming spaceship headquarters in Cupertino is by Norman Foster.)

The Dartmouth recently published articles on the progress of construction in general and ’53 Commons in particular. The word is that football recruits like the revived Commons.

The designers of the LSC, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, call the rectangular green space framed by the new building “the Yard.” The paved paths look as if they follow routes that have been there for generations, but one has to wonder how the architects knew to put them where they are. The Dartmouth has an article with details about the building, noting that the dedication will take place next month.

News notes on construction projects old and new:

• An anonymous donation has named the fitness center recently installed in the old gymnasium space at the top of Alumni Gym for former Trustee Charles Zimmerman ’23 Tu ’24 (The Dartmouth, Bloomberg).
• An article in the Valley News on Harris Trail at Hanover and the Class of 1966 Lodge.
• Health Facilities Management has named the DHMC complex an “icon” and the subject of one of its case studies. The SBRA announcement notes the hospital’s adoption of the shopping mall form.
• For an example of a remarkable and appropriate setting for a Beverly Pepper sculpture that shares some of the attributes of Thel, see the Weisslers’ amphitheater in New York (New York Times). See also the BLDGBLOG post on Buried Buildings.
• A building-related issue of The Mirror has some details on the Life Sciences Center.
• One hopes that the OPDC will get the chance to add a Class of 1953 Commons page to its list of projects.
• Another Titcomb Cabin update.

Dartmouth Now posted an update on campus construction back in June. The first photo (larger version on Flickr) shows the busy east end of the Life Sciences Center.

There is also a podcast covering the LSC and sustainability, and the webcam continues to show the state of the work.

Dartmouth Now, by the way, is from the Office of Public Affairs and appears to be the new and peppier face of the college on the Web, up since about January.

The Dartmouth ran an article on May 7th about perceptions of the cost of the Life Sciences Center and included a photo of the building in progress. The webcam has a current view.

A time-lapse film of the demolition of the intriguing and notable but appropriately-unloved Strasenburgh Hall is available.

The firm designing the Life Sciences Center, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, is responsible for the fifth-most photographed site in all of New York City: the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue (Philly).

The designs for Memorial Field’s West Stand or the replacement for Thayer Dining Hall have not been revealed, but a few smaller items of interest have come out over the past few months:

• Construction of the ’78 Life Science Center began in early September, notes the OPDC, after the Occom Pond Neighborhood Association’s appeal of Hanover’s zoning permission was dismissed (press release). A webcam shows the site when it’s light out.
• The reconstruction of Rolfe Field and the construction of the surrounding Biondi Park have been delayed by site conditions, quoted Jim Hunter of Clark Construction Company: “Dartmouth is just so old that you never know what you’re going to
  find underneath the ground.” When students were digging trenches in the area during World War I, they found an old house foundation.

• Moore Ruble Yudell has a page up for the North Campus master plan. It is under work > campus > planning > north campus on the firm’s website.
• A huge amount of effort has gone into building a sprawling housing development near the hospital at Gile Hill, and into making it not seem like affordable housing (site map). The project was designed by Gossens Bachman Architects of Montpelier, designers of the Rock of Ages Corporation Visitor Center and of a design for the Vermont Granite Museum.

OPDC has posted two watercolor views of the Class of 1978 Life Sciences Building: a view of the north facade, marking a dramatic entrance to Dartmouth, and one of the south facade facing the Medical School’s courtyard.

The Class of 1978 Life Sciences Building is taking the place of Strasenburgh Hall, a cramped Medical School office building. Strasenburgh was built as a dormitory, and for that reason it was the only building on the School’s “original” (1950-1980) campus not designed by SBRA: the dormitory, like its Tuck School counterpart Buchanan Hall, was designed by the consulting architects of the College, Campbell Aldrich & Nulty.

Dartmouth Medicine magazine (Winter 2006) has an article by Jennifer Durgin on Strasenburgh’s past, and it includes an excellent aerial photo of the medical campus. Strasenburgh’s small scale and busy faceting made it one of the least unappealing buildings of the group.

Joining the camera facing the Tuck Living and Learning Complex construction site is a new camera atop Dana trained on the ’78 Life Sciences Center.

The Class of 1978 shows another rendering of the Life Sciences Center. The Dartmouth states that demolition of the three buildings on the site has begun, and notes that workers will break ground in December.

The Life Sciences Building has a name: The Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center (press release; article in The Dartmouth). The only other Dartmouth building named for a class that comes to mind was named only last year, the Class of 1953 Dining Commons.

The class plans to raise $40 million of the roughly $95-million construction cost. The architecture firm, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, recently hired a few new designers in its Pittsburgh office to handle this project in particular.

The press release announcing the gift includes the first perspective renderings available, and they emphasize what appears to be an elliptical-plan glass stair tower. The long cross-bar will be the teaching portion of the building, and the shorter north-south wing will house the research spaces and administration.

[Updated 10.20.2007: "Building" changed to "Center" in first stentence.]

Dartmouth’s steam tunnel continues to stretch northward. A thumbnail sketch:

• From Heating Plant along the Green to the Berry site (mid-1990s)
• From Berry site up Berry Row to Moore (around 1998)
• From Moore, tap into historic hospital tunnel network to reach Kellogg Auditorium and adjoining chiller plant (early 2000s?)
• From Kellogg, run northward behind Medical School to future Life Sciences Building site (2007).

The Dartmouth has recently written up the Second College Grant Bicentennial and the Life Sciences Building.

The latest Life Sciences Building plans have been posted. The site plan (pdf) is remarkable. The elevation (pdf) of the north facade shows how much lower this somewhat tall building will be than the existing Remsen-Vail.

More detailed plans and photos of a model of the Life Sciences Building are available. The building has a bit of the New Deal Post Office about it (see the Post Office of Old Chester, Pa.), while the gabled greenhouse gives it some of the feeling of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and thus Pope’s Scottish Rite Temple in Washington, D.C.

The Trustees recently discussed updates to Lo-Yi Chan‘s 2001 master plan and the designs for the Visual Arts Center, the Life Sciences Building, the Class of 1953 Commons, and the New Thayer Dining Hall (press release).

Peter Bohlin, whose firm is designing the Life Sciences Building, designed the Vermont Institute of Natural Science Nature Center not far from Hanover in Queechee, Vermont (pdf).

The OPDC’s updated Construction Maps show the north campus finally knitting together.

The Life Sciences Building looks like it will serve as a gateway building, form a wall defining two of the bounds of the campus, and partially enclose an informal quadrangle at the Medical School.