Duke Expansion

Duke University Growing with $700 Million Investment Strategy

By R. Carter Langston

Duke University in Durham, N.C., is adding almost 1 million sq. ft. of instruction, study, research and administration space. Total cost for ongoing or recently completed projects is estimated at $268 million.

"Duke has had a pretty remarkable series of openings," said David Jarmul, a university spokesman. "In the past few months, the university opened a number of new projects and is planning the development of its central campus."

In 2001, the university's Board of Trustees approved a comprehensive, five-year strategic growth plan called "Building on Excellence." The $700 million plan included the current projects.

Jarmul said the university's expansion will continue with a substantial build-out in the next few years at the central campus. Last year, the university completed a $2.3 billion capital campaign and recently began development planning for the site of the new Nasher Museum of Art.

"The central campus is predominated by buildings erected just after World War II and there was no systematic planning," Jarmul said. "Now Duke University is intensively focused on developing the central campus as an area of growth."

Tallman Trask, the university's executive vice president, said the central campus is neither central nor a campus. But Trask and others envision a plan that turns the site into a central gathering place.

Trask said the project's first phase will primarily focus on residential housing for senior undergraduates and graduate students. Plans for that first phase should be complete by fall 2007, he said.

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French Sciences Center

One ongoing project is the 289,000-sq.-ft. French Sciences Center, which sits inside the perimeter of four other buildings.

General contractor Skanska USA Building of Charlotte began construction in August 2004 and commenced in phases while the architect, Moore Ruble Yudell, was completing the design work.

The $94 million project should be complete by December.

"This was the first time that we worked with Moore Ruble Yudell in a phased design/build scenario," said Scott McCloud, the Skanska USA project manager. "When the communication channels are open between the architect and the contractor, both projects can occur almost simultaneously and we can deliver faster and cheaper."

University officials say the French Sciences Center will be the centerpiece of the growing Duke University campus. Named for Duke University graduate and Trustee Melinda French Gates - wife of Microsoft founder Bill Gates and one of Time magazine's three "Persons of the Year" for 2005, along with her husband and U2 singer Bono - the building connects the university's departments of biological anthropology and anatomy, chemistry, mathematics, physics and six greenhouses.

"This was the worst place on that campus to put a building (from a contractor's perspective)," McCloud said. "From the university's perspective, it made sense putting it there because it integrates and expands Duke University's capabilities in scientific research."

The building site featured utility runs and a chilled water facility that had to be relocated. Skanska is managing the fast-track construction of the new $16 million chilled water plant, with the goal of producing chilled water at full capacity by March.

Divinity School

Modern materials and methods blend gently with the hand-carved details of the late 19th and early 20th centuries at the Duke Divinity School. A 3,500-sq.-ft. addition, designed to incorporate seamless Gothic features as the older structure, complements the original craftsmanship in the architectural design.

This $16 million project, completed in March 2005, earned Southeast Construction's Best of 2005 Award of Excellence.

The owners, designers and contractors worked together to ensure a seamless production of elements to complement the style of the original structure and the surrounding campus buildings. Hand-laid Duke stone, quarried from nearby Orange County, N.C., integrated the exterior wall system of limestone, steel, concrete and glass to complement the existing chapel.

Increased space provides the Divinity School community with a refectory for fellowship and eating, larger classroom spaces, administrative offices and a suite for the Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life.

Skanska USA was again the general contractor, with Hartman Cox Architects of Washington, D.C., as the architect.

Perkins Library

When classes resume in August, Duke University's returning seniors might note the departure of the piercing construction noises at the William R. Perkins Library.

Construction started in fall 2003 on a 150,000-sq.-ft. addition, called the Bostock Building, which ties to the complex of three structures built in 1928, 1948 and 1968. At the same time, the university broke ground on a new two-story atrium-pavilion, called the Karl and Mary Ellen von der Heyden Pavilion, which connects to the library adjacent to the main entrance.

General contractor Bovis Lend Lease of Raleigh delivered the Bostock Building and the von der Heyden Pavilion to the university in September. Now that construction is complete, the new structures are heavily used.

But librarians will continue handing out earplugs to studious library users until renovations are complete in August on the 40,000 sq. ft. of space on the main library's first floor.

The cost for the three phases is about $52 million.

Because of the library's prominent location on the Quad and the surrounding architecture, which features the university's signature Duke Stone limestone façades on the older buildings, the Perkins Project had to reflect the same signature Gothic architectural design. But the back side of the Bostock Building faces newer architectural designs and has a brick and precast façade.

Nasher Museum of Art

Art graces 64,592 sq. ft. at Duke University in five pavilions and three art galleries. Nestled on nine acres between the university's East and West campuses and separated by gardens and a wooded landscape from the rest of campus, the $23 million Nasher Art Museum is itself a work of art, designed by Rafael Vinoly Architects.

Prior to the museum's opening in October, the university displayed its collection of 13,000 artworks in the Duke University Museum of Art on the East Campus. That museum, a former science building, opened in 1969.

According to the architect, the design dynamically embraces the surrounding landscape as platonic boxes, positioned in a loose radial pattern near the top of a gentle slope that characterizes the site. At the center of these platonic boxes, sits a 14,000-sq.-ft. glass-enclosed atrium that connects the buildings.

"The goal was to set up the five pavilions in the garden and to take advantage of the site," said John Kinnaird, project manager for Rafael Vinloy Architects of New York.

Atlanta-based Beck was the general contractor and performed the major construction work, which included site work, foundation work, installation of structural steel, precast concrete panels and glass walls and construction of the five pavilions and installation of the atrium.

The art facility is named for its primary benefactor, international art collector and real estate developer Raymond D. Nasher.