Would Have Been Wednesday – Argonne Theory and Computing Sciences Building

This week we take a trip back to 2004 for a Design-Build competition that we entered as part of a team with Mesirow Financial Real Estate and Turner Construction to deliver a Theory and Computing Sciences Building for Argonne National Laboratory in Darien, Illinois. For this endeavor Epstein was the design architect and planner.

The Epstein design features two formal components - a one/two story horizontal 'mat' building and a vertical 'tower', these compositional devices organized the primary programmatic elements into distinct volumes, yet were distributed in a seamless manner to fuse circulation and function.

The primary office and support areas were grouped around central laboratory spaces within a single-story volume of 'universal' space, punctuated strategically by landscaped courtyard spaces which provided daylight, relief and inspiration.

The research/office plateau surrounded a discrete volume - the Supercomputer Support Center, which expresses its significance within the facility. Balancing this position, the library functions were housed in a vertical "tower of knowledge" located at the eastern end of the building, and highly visible from the main campus entrance. The transparent, library volume assumed the symbolic role of knowledge/memory in contrast to supercomputer's symbolic associations of thought and discovery. A physical and metaphorical connection was made between the two, in the form of a pedestrian bridge/tube providing a physical link for users and digital data, while implying a neural connection.

Alas, the Mesirow, Turner, Epstein team was not selected for this assignment and the contract was awarded to an exp (at the time, known as Teng) led team.