V. ENERGY RESEARCH LAB

Critic: Michael Baumberger Spring 2019

This project is to envision a new Energy Research Laboratory on The Ohio State University's west campus. This section of campus has been largely dedicated to private/ public partnerships, and focuses on utilitarian innovations.

Laboratories are spaces where scales of inquiry collapse. Global abstractions are designed to physically present themselves in these spaces, taking form through experimentation. Yet, the production of knowledge doesn't end with the results of an experiment. The scientific act can only be solidified by the additional production of public discourse. To legitimize the results of the experiment, peers must review, duplicate, and multiply experiments across new territories. Once reliable witness is produced, for this local performance to have a global effect, knowledge must be proliferated amongst global audiences. Change stems from the agency of the audience. Thus, the scientific act is intimately engaged with an oscillation of scale; the global must become local, and the local must become global.

The design strategy for this laboratory aims to integrate the building with the greater scales of the campus and city, all the while compounding scale internally to produce its own urban microcosm. This mini-urbanism consists of four buildings:

1 - Dedicated Research Unit: Glass walls produce hermetically sealed zones within a large, social infrastructure.

2 - Loose Study & Administration: Meeting rooms, offices, and an open lab floor for preparation work.

3 - University Engagement Unit: Circulation nexus/ lecture hall

4 - Service Unit: Material logistics, electric transformer station, water collection, heating, and a cafeteria.

As systems integrate with the building to enable its program to perform, they draw relationships across the space. The liminal space is forefronted because of this, for it is here that the broader networks are reasserted, and their relationships are drawn in asphalt, wire, and ductwork.