Bohlin Powell Larkin Cywinski/Burt Hill Kosar Rittelmann
Software Engineering Institute
perspective rendering (1986)
The entry pavilion and the office and laboratory block comprise the main facade. They are joined by a curved indentation that provides a forecourt for the main entry, and allows the entire design to flow smoothly from side to side. Though it eschews historicism, the facade establishes relationships with the neighboring buildings.
The entry pavilion is placed on axis with St. Paul's. It is an upright element, in counterpoint to the facade of the cathedral. Its crowning element evolved from a gabled skylight to a rectilinear capstone that still peaks slightly in deference to St. Paul's. At the curved linkage, aluminum beams spring outward and downward from the building's upper reaches like the flying buttresses of St. Paul's.
The office and laboratory block emulates Mellon Institute's massing and extends the building line of Mellon Institute's facade. It is wrapped with a modern glass curtain wall above a limestone base. The curtain wall reflects Mellon Institute's colonnade, literally and figuratively, in its two-toned glass and insistent vertical members.
...SEI is respectful of both place and program; there is a kind of architectural hum as aspects of its heterogeneous neighbors resonate throughout. (Russell 1989)While the building warms to its setting, its program is quite introverted. SEI is a joint project of Carnegie Mellon University and the U.S. Department of Defense, and its activities are not open to public scrutiny. Thus, the building communicates a special concern for privacy and security, and its public face is a rather private one. The main entry and forecourt are faced largely in stone and are unwelcoming to passersby. At the rear, however, the stone is eroded by glass, and a rear entry into the same pavilion, bridged by a trellis of steel columns and beams, is more friendly. Inside, the pavilion opens into a two-story lobby where a monumental stair climbs the convex wall of the facade, and a standing light fixture serves as a technological totem. After the lobby, hallways lined with cable trays recede into privacy.
In the changing regional economy, the high-tech laboratory is heir to the region's earlier generations of industrial research facilities, such as Mellon Institute. In the words of an awards jury, SEI "is a modern-day temple honoring a new technology."
Bohlin Powell Larkin Cywinski (now Bohlin Cywinski Jackson) was the primary design architect. The firm's experience with SEI led to subsequent projects for Carnegie Mellon: the Carnegie Mellon Research Institute, the Intelligent Workplace, and the Engineering and Science Library.