To transform a foreboding neighbor into a community contributor, the redesigned Syracuse University Energy Complex forges a new relationship with its context to become a neighborhood asset. From the neighborhood and the highway, the Energy Campus serves as a beacon and a symbol of the University’s commitment to sustainability.
The Syracuse University Energy Campus, won through a design competition, is an integral part of the University’s Climate Action Plan. Located on the western edge of the campus, bound and isolated by an elevated interstate and an elevated rail line, the University’s energy plant has for many years presented itself as hulking and impenetrable. In addition to producing cleaner and more efficient power, heat, and cooling through cogeneration, it knits the power plant back to the surrounding urban fabric, introducing synergistic programming for the University and its neighborhood. The new architecture actively supports this transformation, enabling programmatic overlaps and educational opportunities, reducing the new buildings’ mass and scale, and emphasizing openness.
The project includes a new cogeneration plant, chiller plant, storage facility, and offices. The obsolete 1926 Steam Station will be gutted and repurposed for academic and community use. A green market, teaching kitchen, and community rooms will fill the ground floor and engage the street; the upper floors house classrooms, offices, and laboratories. Greenhouses, warmed with the cogen plant’s waste heat, will occupy the roof. An elevated public path – the Education Loop – snakes through the entire complex.
Location: Syracuse, NY | Size: 91,000 SF | Client: Syracuse University
