Regents Hall, the university’s new science facility, is on track to be completed by May 2012, two months earlier than previously announced.
The building is slated to open for the next academic year with an official ceremony to celebrate staff and distinguished alumni closely involved in the project.
The new facility will offer more study and laboratory space for both undergraduate and graduate students, according to Ali Whitmer, an associate dean of Georgetown College. Instead of having separate spaces for the biology, chemistry and physics departments, faculty members from different areas will have interspersed offices in the hope of promoting interdisciplinary research.
In an effort to be ecologically friendly, the facility includes plans for new green space — a terrace running between the Hariri Building and Regents Hall that will incorporate water capture and reuse technology.
“We will have what we are referring to as a new quad, which will be an open space with plants and lawn,” Whitmer said.
Sustainability is also incorporated into Regents Hall’s interior design and its heating and cooling system.
“We have included in all elements of construction, design and finishes what we all would call green building practices,” Whitmer said. “The way the windows were designed and the orientation of spaces was planned to take advantage of natural light rather than using electrical lighting.”
The cost of the $93 million LEED-certified building was defrayed by a $6.9 million grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The grant was awarded as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 in part because the university employed 750 people during the building’s construction and created 28 permanent positions during an economic recession.
Regents Hall was partially funded by the Board of Regents, the board of alumni advisers for whom the building was named.
“The building was named in their honor in recognition of the philanthropy and service they have provided to Georgetown as an entire institution. It is at such a high level that we wanted to honor them in a big way, and this was a way that we could do that,” Whitmer said.
