When executive director Graham Shimmield and his colleagues set out to build a new home for Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in 2009, they wanted a structure sensitive to the surroundings of the new locale on the coast of Maine. With the help of their architects, contractors, and engineers, they got just that.
Sitting on the banks of an estuary, at the foot of a hill, the lab is surrounded by forest. There are no right angles in the structure’s external envelope and the three wings that com- prise the lab increase in width as they extend from the core facility, as if reaching outwards toward the environment.
“We’re an oceanography center with a specialty in micro- bial oceanography,” says Shimmield. “I worked with the de- signers and the architects to really shape and hone the design that would translate the science to the design and vice versa.”
By replacing artificial light with a creative utiliza-
tion of daylight when possible, using solar panels, and installing heat recovery systems, Bigelow became an energy-efficient lab boasting Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) platinum status—the highest of the four levels of certification and one of just seven certified projects in New England.
On the human side, the lab space is very open, providing opportunities for teamwork and cross-pollination of ideas.
“We have some expert meeting rooms for collabora- tion between the scientists, a superb public space, a large common space, and a meeting space like an atrium, two