SUNY - Old Westbury, Natural Science Building, Old Westbury, NY

“Size:
70,000 SF

Highlights:
geothermal system
deep energy retrofit
Adaptive reuse
”

The 70,000 SF Natural Sciences Building was constructed in 1985 with 2 stories above grade and a basement. This building serves as the primary academic facility for the sciences and houses the STEP/CSTEP program and the SUNY Neuroscience Research Institute.

 The scope includes MEP/FP design for a complete rehabilitation of the Natural Science Building. As part of these services, and as per Fund's Directives, SETTY provided an analysis of the overall project execution, including an occupied phased renovation of the existing building, deep energy retrofit and building wide infrastructure replacement. The work once completed will achieve the modernization of the facility, which includes classrooms, teaching labs, research labs, and faculty offices. 

 The mechanical design for the building included utilizing a new geothermal system, with roughly 200 geothermal wells.  Due to limited mechanical room space in the basement, complex phasing was required for this project, which included 8 phases of mechanical renovation, and took into account off season work to minimize cost and operational impacts.

The Natural Sciences building is the only science building on the campus, creating a critical program space in sequencing renovation of the building and that’s capable of housing chemistry and biology teaching and research labs, a mammalian and aquatic vivarium, and a greenhouse.  In order to accomplish a full building renovation, the design separated the construction into two distinct phases to maintain building occupancy and operations for teaching and research.