Groundbreaking for the underground Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute building is expected to take place during the summer of 2006, and the building will become occupied in fall 2007, according to the most recent schedule released Thursday at the Campus Planning Committee meeting.
“We slowed the project down a bit because we wanted to get it right,” said chemistry professor Jim Hutchison, who is on ONAMI’s leadership team.
The committee met to review the schematic designs for the building and discuss the landscaping around the area. Approval of the design will be at the committee’s meeting in January.
Hutchison said the site for the new building, underneath the lawn between Huestis Hall and Deschutes Hall, was selected because of the relative absence of vibrations that might harm the building’s sensitive equipment and because of its proximity to other science buildings – including another science building that may be built between Deschutes Hall and Franklin Boulevard in the more distant future.
Hutchison said the new building will feature space for collaborative endeavors, such as those the University engages in with Oregon State University, Portland State University, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and industry representatives through ONAMI.
Tim Evans, principal architect for SRG Partnership, Inc., the firm designing the building, said the one part of the new building that would not be underground is the entrance.
Because neither Huestis Hall nor nearby Streisinger Hall has a major entrance, the entrance for the ONAMI building might also function as a major entrance for those two buildings.
It is likely that the entrance would be a stairway that allows natural light down into the ONAMI building, 19 feet below the sidewalk.
One of the goals of the project is to maintain open space on campus and encourage more active use of the plaza.
Part of artist Scott Wylie’s “Science Walk,” a chain of tiles on the ground connecting the science buildings from Cascade Hall to Deschutes Hall, would have to be removed during the construction process, but Evans said the pieces would be salvaged and then either reinstalled or recreated to emphasize links between the sciences.
Larry Gilbert, principal landscape architect for Cameron McCarthy Gilbert & Scheibe Landscape Architects LLP, said the construction would also necessitate the removal of at least 35 trees. He added that these trees are fairly young, planted only 10 years ago.
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