It’s very old in the life of a science building, where you have to factor in technological aging as well as the physical wear and tear that any building endures. Pete Sandberg, our assistant vice-president for facilities, says buildings need to be updated and renovated at least every 40 years – and he’s talking about non-technical buildings, such as dormitories.

We could. In fact, that option has been thoroughly considered twice – first when we conducted the feasibility study, which was completed in 1999, and again when we re-energized our planning in spring 2002. But adding on and renovating are more complicated than they may appear.

For example, renovating most existing science buildings on college or university campuses is a challenge due to the lack of sufficient space between adjacent floors. Our current building has 12 feet of floor-to-floor height, compared with 16 feet in modern science buildings. You need room for all the ventilation and ductwork that has to go between floors. Forty years ago, the study of science didn’t require all that.

If we wanted to renovate the building so it could handle the high-ventilation needs of modern science, it really wouldn’t cost much less than building an entirely new structure. An alternative would be to renovate the existing building for classrooms, conference rooms and offices, which work just fine in a building with a 12-foot floor-to-floor height, and put of all the “wet lab” stuff, those areas that require a lot of ventilation and plumbing in a new building. That saves money, but it would split our program, creating adjacencies based on structural rather than programmatic considerations.

Assistant Provost Arnie Ostebee, Registrar Mary Cisar, and Assistant Vice-President for Facilities Pete Sandberg are an integral part of the design team, as are representatives from the five departments – biology (Anne Walter and Charles Umbanhowar, Jr.), chemistry (Mary Walczak and Paul Jackson), mathematics (Matt Richey), physics (Dave Nitz) and psychology (Chuck Huff). We also haave three students on the design team (Ian Campbell, Ian Vaagenes and Kristen Roys).

In 1998, under former President Mark Edwards, we had a competitive application to do the feasibility study for a new building. We selected Holabird & Root, a Chicago-based firm that designs a lot of campus science buildings. They’ve done upgrades or new buildings for the University of St. Thomas, Macalester College, Grinnell College and Central College in Iowa; they’re working now with Augsburg College and Beloit College.

After President Edwards resigned, the whole project got put in the drawer until current President Chris Thomforde re-energized the planning and design process in spring 2002. At that point, we asked ourselves: Do we want to continue working with these architects, or should we start all over again? We decided to continue with Holabird and Root.

I prefer the term “peer institutions,” but I know what you mean – and yes, there is a potential downside. Architects have signatures. From time to time members of the design committee have said: “This is looking just like the St. Thomas building.” We have to make sure our architects are designing a St. Olaf building. We’re up front about that. They’ve heard that message.

Buildings go through three phases of design. The first is called schematic design; that’s when the concept of the building is developed, when you determine where the site will be. It’s when you put together the mass of the building.

The second stage is called design development. That’s where you take the spaces that have been roughly laid out and start to add all the details. Design development takes a fair amount of time in a science building: Where are all the outlets going to go? Where will we need high power for this equipment? Where are the hoods and ductwork going to go? You lay out the specifics of what each room will look like.

The third phase is construction documents. In our vernacular it means you’re developing the blueprints, something from which contractors can build the building.

We are currently (summer 2006) essentially done with design development and starting to prepare the construction documents.

Throughout this time, we have constantly asked ourselves: “Is this building really addressing the vision?”

The seven I's are interdisciplinary, investigative, interactive, innovative, interconnected, inviting and integrity.

I decided it would be nice to capture all of our conversations in a succinct statement that is core to our vision. The first thing that came to mind was “interdisciplinary.” Then I thought about us wanting an “inviting” building, and by then I was getting on a roll, and I said: “OK, we want this to be ‘investigative.’”

At one point, we had five I’s. Then Jeanne Narum – who is director of Project Kaleidoscope, which has been the most prominent national group in pushing for new science facilities – challenged us to think big. She urged us to think not only about what we’re doing within the sciences but how we connect outside. How do we connect to international programs, to other distinctively St. Olaf strengths? That’s how we came up with “interconnected.”

Jeanne, whose late husband taught philosophy at St. Olaf, noticed that we hadn’t talked much about how we want to use the building – just how it’s going to be set up. So we added “innovative” to describe our goal of having spaces that allow us to use the technology in an innovative way for our teaching.

We want the college to view the science complex as a campus facility. We don’t want this to be the building that you go to only when you do science and math. I’d love to have our atrium designed acoustically well enough so the St. Olaf music ensembles could have concerts there and social spaces for a reception afterward.

I’d love to see the art faculty view that atrium space as an extension of their museum. A lot of art by St. Olaf students and others has science themes. I’m hoping these new classrooms will be really beautiful, like the tiered classroom in Dittmann Center.

We have a strong international studies program, and technology exists that allows you to connect to people all over the world. When we have students doing biology in south India, maybe we could use the technology to report on what they’re doing. We could have joint conferences with people all over the world.

This blurring of departments and merging of disciplines within the sciences is happening across other disciplines as well. Bioethics, for example, is a crucial field today. It’s increasingly important for the sciences to understand how we connect with people who write about science, people who consider the ethical aspects of science, people who can put science within the context of faith.

If you design spaces that intentionally make themselves attractive for a broad group of people, thereafter the space affects how you interact and operate. It would be difficult to have the kind of intellectual interaction without spaces that promote it.

I can’t tell you how much a proposed new Science Complex helps in recruiting faculty.

For the past several years, we have been successful in searches in part because I could show candidates emerging plans for a building and a clearly articulated programmatic vision. I could tell them how important it would be to have them be part of this planning. For some candidates, it’s very attractive to be involved in designing the spaces they’re going to use.

The biggest impact has to do with professional activity. We are so low on research space. We’re showing our new faculty members or our recruits about 150 square feet of research space; our competitors are probably showing them 300 to 600 square feet of research space. And that’s a real disadvantage for us.

Where it ultimately has the most crucial impact, though, is the morale of our current faculty. This has been a dream of ours for a long time. Right now our faculty has a pretty high morale – in large part because we’re excited about moving forward on this.

The feasibility study considered several sites on campus. But this is a great site, and here’s why. Two buildings on that site – Flaten Hall and the Annex –are well used, but are not the campus’ most attractive buildings. From an environmental perspective, one of the best ways to be environmentally friendly, or green, is to use an existing site. You can recycle nearly all of an existing building.

Then you have a site on campus that already has been developed for a building – as opposed to going into some pristine site that you take out of its current state.

Some people are nervous about the effect on Norway Valley.

We’ve been just as thorough in trying to minimize the impact on Norway Valley. The building that we envisioned three years ago in the feasibility study was an enormous structure set way down the Flaten hill. We’ve moved it up the hill – east and west, back and forth – trying to minimize the impact on the surrounding trees and Norway Valley.

No doubt, it takes out a small piece of the valley. But through deliberations with the environmental concerns committee, we’ve agreed that losing a little corner of Norway Valley is an acceptable price when you consider the benefit of returning the campus to a pedestrian-friendly and green space.

I can’t wait to see the campus when this is done. If you think about our campus right now, the No. 1 problem spot is in front of Old Main and Flaten and Holland Hall. You’ve got the parking and roadway and students all intermixed – right in front of the hallmark building on campus.

When the Science Complex is done, Old Main will stand out spectacularly. It will sit at the end of a campus green. We talk about the beautiful central green now in the middle of campus. We’re going to have that continual green space all the way out to Old Main. Also, Old Music Hall will be more prominent.

That refers to a building that is built with respect for the environment. The other term that goes hand in hand is “sustainable” building – one that is highly energy-efficient and designed to maximize your ability to capture natural energy opportunities. These terms refer to buildings with features built in that try to reduce the ecological footprint of the building. It’s a building that intentionally tries to minimize the impact it has on the environment. We are definitely going to have a “green” building.