Dartmouth College’s new faculty and graduate student center completes

Anonymous Hall, a $28 million-dollar, 32,995-sf faculty and graduate center named for alumni and friends who have quietly supported the college over two centuries, has completed on Dartmouth College’s campus. The project reuses and adds to a vacant 1960s library in the heart of the siloed north campus quad to create a new administrative and social center for the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Part of the project included the demolition of an unused laboratory to make way for an addition that reorients the building to create campus connections to the south. The additions houses the lobby and a cafe with an adjacent terrace overlooking a green. 

The building’s upper floors comprise collegial faculty offices, classrooms, places for interactive student gathering. A walk-out graduate student lounge in the lower level opens to a protected courtyard below a pedestrian bridge.

Anonymous Hall placed an emphasis on energy efficiency, attempting to achieve 2030 energy performance with the 1960s building. The highly insulated building includes lightweight stud framed exterior walls support that a light terra-cotta rain screen and combine 6″ of continuous dual density stone wool insulation with 5 1/2″ of stone wool batt in the cavities to provide an effective U-Value of 0.033, double code required thermal resistance. The roof system provides a minimum R-60 continuous insulation with an average effective U-value of 0.014 or almost triple code required thermal resistance. Advanced glazing and a highly responsive radiant heating and cooling system with dedicated air and fan assisted natural ventilation, served by central chilled water and hot water loops are also included. 

“With its high-tech, efficient curtain wall; solar canopy; and high R value walls, carbon savings exceed all expectations, and design models show the project energy use approaches net zero,” said Principal-in-Charge Josiah Stevenson, Leers Weinzapfel, in a release. 

In addition to the building itself, the project also includes new entrances for surrounding structures, a wide pedestrian bridge, and new circulation between buildings.