Achieving near net-zero energy use, Anonymous Hall, designed by Josiah Stevenson of Leers Weinzapfel Associates together with landscape architects Richard Burch Associates, serves as Dartmouth College’s new north campus hub in the heart of its medical school quad.
This project reuses and adds to a vacant library, transforming it into a vibrant administrative and social center for the School of Graduate Studies and for the north campus as a whole.
For its design based on reusing an existing construction in addition to using the latest in sustainable technologies and energy-reduction interventions, Anonymous Hall has recently been awarded a 2022 Green Good Design Award and a 2022 American Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
Surrounded by 1960s-era buildings on the school’s siloed north campus, the 32,995-square-foot Anonymous Hall project—as well as new entrances for its surrounding buildings, a wide pedestrian bridge, and new circulation between buildings— transforms an overlooked corner of the campus into a well-scaled, inviting north quad.
Anonymous Hall provides an accessible, seamless link to the historic green and main campus shared with undergraduate sciences.
It has a light-filled center with spaces for focus, collaboration, and social interaction.
The south addition houses the building’s lobby and a café with an adjacent terrace overlooking a new lawn.
Tied together by a spiral stair visible from the south lawn, the building’s upper floors contain faculty offices, classrooms, and places for student gatherings.
The graduate student lounge in an opened lower level connects to a protected courtyard below a pedestrian bridge.
As a reused structure in a cold climate, the choices of high R-value terra cotta clad walls, photovoltaic canopy, triple-glazed windows, and high-performance south-facing glass with an expanded metal interlayer to limit summer sun create a building with a low embodied energy that approaches net-zero energy use.
By reusing much of the existing structure, the building reduces embodied carbon in its structure and operational carbon with a 67-kW photovoltaic canopy on the uppermost level under a planted terrace overlook.
The reuse of 20,000 cubic feet of concrete alone meant a reduction of 1,237 metric tons of CO2.
As part of the site work necessary to reorient the building toward the south, the project incorporated a stormwater capture system with a catchment area beyond the site to address problematic run-off and maximize the benefit to the watershed.
The building uses water-efficient fixtures, native drought-tolerant planting, and omits irrigation to reduce water use.
Based on campus newspaper articles, and alumni and departmental responses, the new building is positively received as a gateway and new image to the north campuses well as a symbol of sustainability for the college.
Project: Anonymous Hall
Architects: Leers Weinzapfel Associates
Design Principal: Josiah Stevenson
Project Architect/Manager: Kevin Bell
Design Team: Ashley Rao, Juliet Chun, Langer Hsu, Bobby Main, Taehoon Lee, Jennifer Hardy, and Zoyi Lin
Sustainable Design: Atelier Ten
Structural Engineer: LeMessurier Consultants
Landscape Architects: Richard Burck Associates, Inc
Client: Dartmouth College
Photographers: Benjamin Benschneider
