Rice dedicates state-of-the-art physics research facility

NIST director, NASA astronaut unveil Brockman Hall for Physics

BY JADE BOYD
Rice News staff

More than 150 gathered Thursday to celebrate the official dedication of Brockman Hall for Physics, Rice’s new state-of-the-art home for fundamental and applied physics research. A delegation of officials from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) joined Rice Board of Trustees Chair Jim Crownover, Rice President David Leebron, astronaut and Rice alumna Shannon Walker and others in unveiling the 111,000-square-foot, four-story building.

“Since its founding, Rice has cared so much about architectural beauty, cutting-edge research and environmental sensitivity,” Crownover said. He noted that all three of those principles are evident in this “magnificent building.”

“Brockman Hall enhances Rice’s status as one of the nation’s premier research universities, and it ensures that Rice will remain a leader in fundamental and applied physics research for years to come,” Leebron said. “The impact of Brockman Hall goes beyond bricks and mortar. This facility forges new pathways between science and engineering, between theory and practice and between Rice’s first and second centuries.”

Special guests at the dedication ceremony included Patrick Gallagher, undersecretary of commerce for science and technology and NIST director; Robert Celotta, director of NIST’s Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology; and Walker.

Crownover and Leebron thanked the A. Eugene Brockman Charitable Trust for its gift to Rice University’s Centennial Campaign to help fund construction of the building.

They also expressed gratitude to NIST, which provided $11.1 million in federal stimulus funding toward the building.

NIST’s Gallagher said the facility represents the ideal “combination of both the economic stimulus for short-term recovery and as a long-term reinvestment in the United States.

“There is nothing more fundamental to our ability to grow as a country than our ability to stay at the cutting edge of research,” Gallagher said.

Rice faculty and staff began moving into Brockman Hall in February. When fully occupied in June, the building will be home to dozens of experimental, theoretical and applied physicists from Rice’s departments of Physics and Astronomy and of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Brockman Hall will support research in atomic, molecular and optical physics; biophysics; condensed matter physics; nanoengineering and photonics.

Walker ’87, a native Houstonian who earned all three of her degrees from Rice, returned from a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station in November. She presented a special gift to Rice at Thursday’s ceremony — a plaque that flew with her aboard the station and which will be displayed in Brockman Hall. The plaque, which was created by the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Walker’s request, depicts “Schrodinger’s cat,” a well-known paradox in quantum physics.

“This little plaque flew somewhere in the neighborhood of over 118 million miles, and I am very honored to bring it back to Rice University,” Walker said.

Brockman Hall is special for several reasons: It was designed, constructed and occupied in just 33 months; it brings together faculty and students who formerly worked in five separate buildings scattered broadly across the campus; it is both a carefully refined 21st-century research facility and one of the most environmentally sustainable buildings at Rice; and it maintains much of the outdoor space that previously existed on Rice’s Science Quadrangle.

The building is composed of two parallel, rectilinear, spatial “bars” that are oriented east to west and connected by glass-enclosed bridges across an open passage that admits natural light and outdoor breezes. The larger south bar houses laboratories, faculty and research offices, a 150-seat lecture hall and a rooftop astronomical observatory. The elevated two-story north bar houses faculty, student and departmental offices and meeting spaces.

The open space beneath the north bar is framed by a “loggia” of tapered concrete columns that form an outdoor room, with shaded areas for class meetings, casual gathering and circulation. Beneath this serene outdoor oasis lies a sensitive and sophisticated complex of laboratories. Designed for vibration-sensitive atomic, molecular and optical physics and condensed-matter research, the hermetically controlled basement laboratories are stabilized on a two-foot-deep concrete slab and isolated from all the building’s mechanical systems. State-of-the-art equipment supplies these labs with “clean” electrical power, chilled water and filtered air that is cleansed of submicroscopic dust.

One of the primary challenges faced by architect KieranTimberlake Associates was to provide such specialized and sophisticated research facilities within a context that could meet the U.S. Green Building Council’s standards for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). KieranTimberlake’s clever and elegant design met LEED Silver standards, and thanks to the tireless efforts of Rice’s Facilities, Engineering and Planning Department and to the attention to detail by construction contractor Gilbane Building Company, Brockman is expected to contend for LEED Gold status.

Energy-saving and environmental features of the building include an energy-recovery system — the largest in a single air unit in Texas — that will save as much as 30 percent of the energy needed to cool the building in the summer. Another green innovation is the building’s de-humidification system, which turns Houston’s legendary humidity into an asset by capturing and returning 100,000 gallons of pure, clean water to Rice’s central plant each year.

“This is a remarkable building in every sense, and it complements the excellent work of the physics community at Rice University,” said Dan Carson, dean of Rice’s Wiess School of Natural Sciences. “The future for science is extremely bright, and Brockman Hall is a clear demonstration of Rice’s commitment to scholarship and achievement in the physical sciences.”