Kaiser Borsari Hall

Certified through the International Living Future Institute, Kaiser Borsari Hall is one of the most sustainable higher education facilities in the U.S., achieving Zero Energy and Zero Carbon certification, as well as Energy Petal certification through the Living Building Challenge®. The project is fully electrified and uses 85 percent less energy than the AIA 2030 baseline for similar buildings.

The team’s commitment to the environment permeated every level of the project. Even the general contractor followed the Contractor’s Commitment to Sustainable Building Practices, a set of guidelines developed to help construction firms contribute through their own green building practices.

While mass timber is not commonly used to build laboratory space, its use for Kaiser Borsari Hall reflected the design team’s ‘why not wood?’ mentality. They modified the typical lab planning module to optimize mass timber material usage with a 16-foot grid, which allowed CLT panels to span between beams without sub-purlins. Because the facility’s dry computational labs have less stringent vibration requirements than other lab applications, designers strategically located sensitive equipment in areas that would experience minimal vibration, either at grade or in areas with shorter spans.

Since Kaiser Borsari Hall is both a lab and an educational building, architects used the warmth of wood to promote learning and inspire creativity. All lab spaces have direct access to daylight, and cloud ceilings help manage acoustics in the classrooms while leaving the CLT visible. The exposed wood, inside and out, adds natural beauty and creates an inspiring environment on what was formerly a parking lot.