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Metropolis Editors, Natural Habitat, sustainability, sustainable architecture

METROPOLIS Introduces Natural Habitat, a Sustainable Homes Video Series

The series debuts with a tour of a tranquil upstate New York retreat designed with Passive House principles.

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EXP is located in Boston’s Roxbury and Fenway neighborhoods, right across from Payette’s Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex, which opened in 2017. Photos: Warren Jagger Photography

July 25, 2024

Payette’s New EXP Building is Designed for Research and Built to Perform

How Northeastern University is fostering exploration through insightful and transparent design.

By: James McCown

Photography: Warren Jagger

NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY IN BOSTON is an institution in a hurry. Decades ago, it was dismissed as a commuter school. However, over the past couple of decades its reputation has risen, and it is now ranked as a top-tier research school by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. According to U.S. News & World Report, it admits a paltry 7 percent of the people who apply. Under the aggressive leadership of President Joseph E. Aoun, a Lebanese-born scholar in linguistics, the school is using architecture to advance its standing, especially in engineering, relative to local competition like Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston University. Nowhere is this more evident than in a new 600,000-square-foot, two-building engineering and science complex designed by Payette.

“With these two buildings Northeastern wants to announce its presence as a major research university,” says Kevin Sullivan, who oversaw the design of the buildings and also serves as Payette’s president and CEO. The district’s first phase was the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex (ISEC), which opened to great acclaim in 2017, winning the Boston Society for Architecture’s coveted Harleston Parker Medal. EXP, a 350,000-square-foot building that completes the ensemble, opened in fall 2023.

EXP is not a shy building. It has curved massing and striking facades of horizontal stainless-steel bands. “The stainless steel reflects light and color,” says Sullivan’s colleague Wesley Schwartz, who led the design of the building’s envelope. Its come-hither look has had an impact—President Aoun liked the building so much he moved his office there. 

The interiors were designed to be highly versatile so that any of the labs can be converted from a dry lab to a wet lab to a computational lab as needed.

The lower levels are mostly what Sullivan calls “makerspaces”— teaching labs for studying robotics, drones, and other kinds of industrial design. “Aoun was keen on having ‘science on display,’ that is, glass partitions that give a sense of the activity taking place within,” Sullivan says. Details, both cheeky and practical, abound. If you look closely at the terrazzo flooring, there are nails, bolts, and screws embedded in the mix. A central stairway seems to float weightlessly, its hanger rods fully visible. Virtually all wall space is whiteboard, which can be commandeered for spontaneous classes and other student/faculty interactions. 

The upper reaches of EXP are more luxurious and formal. The highest floor is reserved for the president’s office and the faculty dining room. Both look out onto a green roof terrace, open to all, with extensive plantings and views of the Boston skyline in multiple directions. The building had an aggressive sustainability agenda and is designated LEED Platinum. The horizontal stainless-steel shading helped achieve a 78 percent decrease in energy use compared with the baseline Architecture 2030 Challenge, Sullivan and Schwartz explain. This “solar veil,” they continue, affords a 78 percent reduction in solar heat gain and a 62 percent reduction in cumulative solar radiation. Furthermore, the use of stainless steel led to an embodied carbon reduction of almost one million tons as opposed to the use of aluminum. 

The fixtures and furniture used inside the building were designed by Andreu Carulla using recycled timber and plastic bottles (HDPE) sourced from a former OMA art exhibition, adding another layer of circular thinking when it comes to materials.

EXP and ISEC form a powerful connective urban precinct bestriding the border between Boston’s Fenway district and its Roxbury neighborhood. A bridge connects to Northeastern’s main campus and spans various local and Amtrak rail lines. The bridge, designed by Payette, is composed of large sheets of thick Cor-Ten steel arrayed in a playful pattern, interspersed with glass panes to allow peeks at the activity below. The firm worked with landscape architect Stephen Stimson Associates to craft the space between the buildings. Peppered with trees and benches, it fronts on Columbus Avenue. 

“It’s the setting for major announcements and gatherings for the university,” Sullivan concludes. “It’s not a sequestered campus quadrangle but resolutely a part of the city”.

The recently constructed Pedestrian Crossing establishes a physical connection between the EXP building and the broader Boston campus.

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