Bohlin Cywinski Jackson
Carnegie Mellon Research Institute
perspective rendering (1993)
In 1987, Carnegie Mellon commissioned avant-garde architect Peter Eisenman to design a building here in a joint venture with the Oxford Development Company. Challenged by Carnegie Mellon president Richard Cyert to design a world-class building that "symbolizes man's capacity to overcome knowledge," Eisenman developed a design based on the complex geometry of the Boolean cube, a model for computer design in the field of artificial intelligence. His project was extremely popular with architectural publishers, but it ultimately foundered on Oxford's inability to lease its space. Perhaps sloping walls and ceilings had something to do with it.
Eisenman Architects, et. al.
Carnegie Mellon Research Institute, north elevation
plate of rendering [from marketing brochure] (1989)
The university subsequently abandoned Eisenman, flirted briefly with Kohn Pedersen Fox, and finally turned to Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, which had already designed the first building at the PTC site, the University of Pittsburgh's Biotechnology and Bioengineering Center. Early versions of the Carnegie Mellon Research Institute (CMRI) built upon themes begun at the University of Pittsburgh building, employing metal-panel walls, bright colors, and irregular extensions of the south facade.
In opting for BCJ, however, new Carnegie Mellon president Robert Mehrabian promoted the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) as the model for the university's off-campus buildings, much as Henry Hornbostel's Carnegie Tech buildings are (now) the model for most development on the main campus. Mehrabian requested more glass and less color--in keeping with the standards set at SEI. As built, the building mass is more simple than in early concepts and the north and south facades are almost entirely glass. On the river (south) side, however, the curtain wall is more complex and active. It is articulated as an assemblage of parts, with sunscreens carried on metal extrusions.
There is a very close fit between materials, massing, plan, and program. CMRI is composed of upended layers stacked parallel. The layers have different claddings, volumes, footprints, and functions.
Viewed along its transverse [east-west] axis, CMRI forms a pair of aluminum-wrapped volumes encasing two vertical slots of horizontal mullioned glass that hold a dark blue core of ribbed siding...The planes also summarize Bohlin Cywinski Jackson's parti: CMRI is a sandwich of fixed and flexible spaces within clearly demarcated spatial blocks. The north and south volumes house dry labs...and offices respectively, and bracket double-loaded, end-glazed corridors enclosing a central core of fixed wet labs and services. (Kroloff 1996)
At first glance, each building at the Pittsburgh Techology Center stands independently in a modern anti-urban context; yet numerous aspects of the architecture and the site plan provide linkages and define axes and outdoor spaces. At CMRI, the architecture reinforces the linear qualities of the site. A pedestrian arcade, projecting walls, and extruded aluminum moldings that extend beyond the ends of the building suggest connectivity to companion buildings, including a possible phase-two addition to CMRI. In its own way, the public realm of the PTC is nearly as ordered as Hornbostel's.