“At the end of the day, for all intents and purposes, this is an office building,” says Dr. Howard Burton, the Institute’s executive director.

But it’s also not a typical office building. The $28.7-million (Canadian), 65,000-gsf, four-story, independent research centre, designed by architects at Saucier + Perotte of Montreal, is self-contained because it is not part of a larger campus. The facility provides more than 60 scientists, at present, with a peaceful environment for deep thought and almost unlimited opportunity for collaboration. The resident scientists who spend a great deal of time there, often at odd hours, also require amenities such as recreational and dining facilities. At the same time, the building remains accessible to large numbers of the greater international scientific community, as well as to members of the general public.

“The key requirements were an abundance of natural light, a harmonious marriage of private and public space, combinations of formal and informal meeting areas, good coffee, and good food,” says Burton.

“This is a new institute,” he explains. “Not very many people had heard of Perimeter Institute before, so the building represents something which really transcends the normal scene for theoretical physics. We wanted to make a very strong statement with the building, both in terms of form and function. It is a showpiece of the Institute.”

Completed in the fall of 2004, the building offers all that, and more.

Form, Function, and Financing

Perimeter Institute was created more than five years ago with a $120-million endowment donated by three philanthropists, as well as additional funds from the federal and provincial levels of government. The Institute was originally housed in the historic Waterloo Post Office building. Burton’s job in designing a permanent home was to protect the endowment as much as possible while creating a building that could support the Institute’s dual purpose of conducting scientific research in key areas of theoretical physics and provide educational outreach programs to advance the intellectual and cultural capacity of students, teachers and members of the general public. As a result, an overriding consideration in designing the building was to properly balance form and function.

“This is a bit of a specious distinction, of course, because form and function are intertwined and you can’t separate them quite so easily,” admits Burton.

It is possible to have a perfectly functioning building that offers nothing in the way of aesthetics. Nine times out of ten, Burton jokes, the ugliest, boxiest building on campus is the physics building. The aesthetics of this building are vitally important not only to the occupants, but also to the Waterloo community.

“We wanted to create a ‘wow’ sensation, indicating our seriousness and dedication to the science, which helps with recruitment,” explains Burton. “At the same time, one doesn’t want to have an overpowering community presence. Waterloo is a relatively small town, and we needed to make sure that we weren’t dominating the town.”

The Institute also didn’t want to go overboard with the design and sacrifice function for form.

“The worst-case scenario is you put up something which satisfies just the artistitc ego of some architect, which doesn’t work, and that would be a disaster,” he says.

Contrary to its predecessors in “physics building” design, Perimeter Institute is a stunning structure which portrays a different image when viewed from different angles. Set on a small grade, the building is shaped like a backwards lower-case “h” (when viewed from the air) with the longer leg, sheathed in black metal, presenting the more public face. That side of the building is also lined with windows that are sized unevenly and arranged randomly, which makes the solid façade appear less imposing.

The shorter leg of the “h,” containing the majority of the researchers’ offices, overlooks a public park with a small pond surrounded by walking paths. The 44 single and double offices are stacked like cubes that jut out from the building at varying distances on three floors, again breaking up what could have looked from the outside like a flat wall of glass. Just below the windows is a reflecting pool, which carries the “water” theme onto the Institute’s property while physically and visually separating researchers from the public park. The pool and pond offer attractive and peaceful views for the scientists as they ponder their ideas and calculations. Unlike many modern facilities, which are strictly climate-controlled, all the office windows open, allowing the researchers the luxury of fresh air.

Connecting the lower legs of the “h” is an interior atrium leading, on one side, to the 205-seat lecture theater with rooftop bistro and, on the other side, a landscaped courtyard with outside collaboration areas. The building wings are connected by three bridges over the courtyard, which is overlooked by walls of glass that fill the interior spaces with natural light. The building is oriented such that the long wall faces south, and the atrium opens to the west, capturing the maximum amount of sunlight.

Science Happens Everywhere

While the researchers do have offices where they can work alone, the reality is that their ideas occur wherever they happen to be, and quite often, whenever they happen to run into one another. The entire building, therefore, is conducive to both quiet contemplation and lively discussion by the use of spaces where scientists can spontaneously and comfortably confer.

Two seminar rooms with audio-visual facilities provide space for formal, high-level conferences and workshops. Each floor has two interaction areas, which overlook either the atrium or the courtyard garden.

“We also have lines of sight so you can see who is where at different interaction areas on different floors,” says Burton. “This eliminates a sense of segregation. The bridges over the courtyard all end in the interaction areas, so people can come out from the library or a lecture, and be involved in a discussion that can naturally continue in an interaction area.”

An unusual feature in any office building constructed in the past century is the use of natural wood flooring and ceilings, and the inclusion of working fireplaces.

“I insisted on wood-burning fireplaces for ambience, and espresso machines for late night meetings,” says Burton. “The wood floors and ceilings provide additional intimacy while dampening noise.”

Another feature that might seem quaint in a modern science building is the preponderance of blackboards. They are everywhere—floor-to-ceiling blackboards in the offices and interaction areas, covering one whole wall of the bistro, even an outdoor blackboard in the courtyard. Where they don’t exist, the physicists “create” them. Burton originally thought the researchers would occasionally want a place to relax away from their work, so he included in the design a lounge with a pool table, a ping-pong table, a refrigerator, and some comfortable seating, but no blackboard.

“I thought people would want a place they could go and just talk about other matters” says Burton.

The architects painted black walls and put black cladding over a chimney chase, for decorative purposes, to emulate the black siding of the building.

“The very first day when we moved in, a bunch of scientists picked up some chalk that was lying around and started writing on that black cladding,” he says. “They turned it into another blackboard.”

The same thing happened on the chimney chase a floor above.

In addition to the research-related features, the building contains amenities to sustain resident  scientists who spend a lot of time there. The Black Hole Bistro, which has an outside deck, is open for coffee and snacks in the morning and serves meals from noon through to the evening.  Staff wellness areas include a workout room, a squash court, saunas, showers, and a games room.

The outreach programming capitalizes on the facility and equipment.  The Institute hosts high-school students and teachers from around the world for special international science camps.  Other programs for the general public include regular monthly lectures, Saturday morning drop-in sessions, as well as special multi-week festivals. In addition, the Institute’s lecture theater is acoustically optimized to host classical music performances, and the atrium has a drop-down projection screen for other types of presentations. Two different, large-scale events can be held simultaneously in the various seminar rooms and theater without interrupting research activities elsewhere in the building.

Lessons Learned

Burton recommends that people embarking on the design of such a building do their homework in advance. He traveled around the world to tour similar facilities, and spent a great deal of time gathering suggestions from the wider scientific community.

Even then, some features required tweaking after the building was occupied. Lighting in the offices used to be on simple on/off switches. Now, all three fixtures in an office operate on their own switch equipped with dimmers. This allows the scientists to control the exact amount of light over each workspace no matter how they orient the furniture.

“Have a clear sense of what you want,” he says. “Have a sense of what the vision is and make sure that you have the right means of being able to execute it in the most streamlined fashion possible. Avoid the dangers of ruling by committee. You want to make sure that somebody can interact with the architects, with the contractors, with whomever, to make sure that the vision is transmitted in a very coherent way.”

By Lisa Wesel