Center for Engineering, Innovation, and Sciences

Center for Engineering, Innovation & Sciences Sense of Place The Wentworth Institute of Technology campus is imbedded in the heart of Boston’s Back Bay community surrounded by neighborhoods and peer institutions. The relationship between town and gown is critical to the Institute’s mission and sense of place. Many students live in the neighborhoods and the Institute values maintaining a constructive dialogue and relationship with the Mission Hill neighborhood. This is the first new building for the Institute in 40 years and its design became a chance to strengthen the relationship with the surrounding neighborhood, formalize the campus quad and convey the forward thinking image of the Institute. The new Center for Engineering, Innovation and Sciences, a flexible, multi-disciplinary lab, classroom and professorial office building, sought to convey openness beyond the student population and welcome the neighborhood. The highly glazed first floor displays its interior activity to pedestrians on Parker Street. The flexible lobby, which can become a presentation space, gallery, lecture hall and casual gathering space has become the heart of the Institute. Sense of Campus The Wentworth campus is a collection of light colored buildings brick buildings of the post war years and concrete buildings of the 60’s and 70’s. The new building placement was an opportunity to create a quad to become the heart and core of the campus. It was designed to fit in to the scale of its surroundings while this modern building with its metal clad façade sits in harmony with its context. Due to the high Back Bay water table, the campus buildings tend to have raised basements and high piano nobile first floors, well above the pedestrian eye level. Walking by the small windows and rusticated bases of the campus conveys a closed unwelcoming environment. This building sought the opposite by making a universally accessible and visually open first floor that displays to pedestrians and passing cars the activity inside. Pedagogic Mission Wentworth is a technical school of hands on learning and close student/faculty relationships. The upper floors have flexible labs with glass walls from the corridor and faculty offices off of informal common spaces, inviting interaction. The first floor is a maker floor, with a multi-purpose lobby, a 3D maker space facing the public street and Accelerate, an entrepreneurial manufacturing facility where students gather to design and create ideas and products. The community runs weekend programs in these spaces, empowering neighborhood teens by creating a bridge between high school and higher education. Resiliency Intended to be a visible demonstration of sustainable design, the Center incorporates enhanced metering for the Institute’s use and student demonstration. The project exceeds the City of Boston’s requirements of sustainability with a highly-efficient thermal envelope, including sun shading on the east, south and west facades, and mechanical equipment designed for maximum efficiency including low-flow fume hoods. Raising the ground floor two feet above current grade and minimizing systems equipment in the basement are resiliency measures that have already proven themselves to be wise decisions.