Sustainable Design

Responding to a city street on one side and a wooded trail on the other, the design of the Daniel L. Malone Engineering Center balances two very different settings. The resulting research building expresses its high-tech function while respecting its natural and historic surroundings.

Fronting Prospect Street, one of Yale’s main academic thoroughfares, a façade of limestone and green slate maintains the rhythm and scale of neighboring buildings. What appears to be a rectangular site from the street is actually a narrow triangle formed where a canal once cut diagonally across the block. On the diagonal of the triangle, facing what is now the Farmington Canal Greenway, a gently curving glass wall spans the full length of the building.

The glass wall encloses the building’s major circulation corridor and is cantilevered from the main structure, creating an open, column-free space. Each research suite is perpendicular to the common corridor, with labs at the core of the building and offices adjacent to the hallway. Windows on both sides of the offices bring natural light into the labs. This arrangement also encourages interaction among research teams.

In addition to wet and dry labs for biomedical engineering and physical sciences, the Malone Center includes the Frederick P. Rose Teaching Laboratory, two seminar rooms and offices. The building houses the Department of Biomedical Engineering, which conducts research into such areas as tissue engineering, drug delivery, and biomedical imaging.

The first building at Yale to achieve LEED Gold, the Malone Center is designed to use energy and water efficiently. High-performance glazing on the windows and the curtain wall and daylight controls decrease the need for electric lighting. A highly reflective white roof keeps the top of the building cool, reducing both the urban heat island effect and the amount of energy required to cool the building. In all, the building uses nearly 10 percent less energy than allowed by state code. By reusing wastewater from the labs for toilet flushing and using low-flow taps, the building uses 85 percent less potable water than a conventional building.