The Green Labs
Overview
An expansion for SCI-Arc built around a single move: one shaft cut through the middle of the plan, sized so that air accelerates as it narrows. That shaft ventilates the building and lights it.
Group 04 · Environmental Systems II, AS3031 · SCI-Arc, Fall 2025
Massing
Two Bars,
One Shaft
Two long bars of studios and labs, held apart just far enough for the shaft to run between them and joined across it at every level. The gap is the building's engine: it is where the air accelerates and where the light comes down.
Site
Where
It Sits
The expansion takes the wedge of land alongside SCI-Arc, the block held between East 4th Street and East 4th Place; the map shows the two blocks of the building on it. It is a long, narrow, deep site pinned against the quarter-mile former freight depot, and that shape is what makes a central shaft the obvious move: every floor runs deep and far from a window.
Plan
One Shaft
Through the Plan
An academic floor: the two bars of studios and labs, the wind tunnel running between them, four stairs and the cores. The arrows are the group's diagram of the air pulled off the floor into the shaft.
Natural Ventilation
A Building
That Breathes
The section is shaped to make air move without a fan. Wind striking the building is forced into a shaft that narrows through the middle of the plan; as the section constricts, velocity rises and pressure drops, and that low-pressure throat pulls air out of every floor it passes. Turbulence zones form off both ends of the mass, and the pressure difference between them and the throat is what keeps the whole section moving.
Daylighting
The Same Shaft,
Doing Two Jobs
The tunnel that accelerates the air is also the only way daylight reaches the middle of a deep plan. The wide opening at the top collects zenithal light, the narrowing walls act as reflectors and carry it down past the levels exterior windows cannot reach, and diffused light spreads outward from the spine so circulation and inner rooms are lit without fixtures.
"While the Venturi effect refers to the acceleration of airflow through the constricted throat of the tunnel, this same geometry functions as a giant light funnel."
Passive and Active
What the Building
Does on Its Own
The passive systems do the everyday work: the central wind tunnel, a metal mesh that daylights without glare, and a dynamic bamboo façade. The active systems, solar panels and a single electrical room, are sized only for the hours the passive ones cannot cover.
Climate
Sun,
Measured
Sun path and radiation on the two bars, run for January, March, June and September. Shown here, June and January. In January the sun sits low and the direct hours fall on different faces, so the shading that blocks the June sun has to let this one in.
The bamboo façade answers the study: its panels turn with the sun's azimuth and the radiation on each face, blocking direct gain in the warm months and letting the winter sun in.
Material Systems
Climate-Responsive
Envelope
A bamboo façade tuned to orientation, thermal-mass concrete holding the daily temperature swing, translucent bamboo atrium panels bringing filtered light into the shaft, and a perforated metal mesh outer layer moderating solar gain without closing the building off.
Lighting
Light Levels,
Space by Space
A floor of both bars coloured by use, each kind of space with its own target light level: 10 foot-candles in circulation, 20 to 40 on the pin-up walls, 30 in bathrooms, seating and the cafe, and 10 to 15 at the model displays, all at a colour temperature of 3000 K.
Lighting Controls
Sensors
and Daylight
The same two bars with their controls placed: occupancy sensors, daylighting photosensors, pendant lights and ceiling mounted lights in every bay, and the diffused daylight shaded in. The photosensors read 1 to 500 foot-candles, and 10 to 5,000 in the atrium and wind tunnel.
Rooms and Shafts
Shaft, Electrical,
Pandemic Plans
Three rooms at a larger scale: a studio with displacement ventilation, a fan coil unit and air purifiers, an electrical room with its transformer, panels and clearances, and the two elevator shafts with their dimensions.
Systems
Roof, Water,
Structure
Roof plan: the roofs pitched 2% toward the drains, with walkable maintenance space and proposed PV panels.
Primary and secondary frame, kept clear of the shaft so the section stays open. Columns green, I-beams blue; secondary steel red (200 mm) and orange (100 mm).
Structural loading: the stair cores in green, the elevators in blue and the atrium in pink, inside the frame.
Water and plant on the site: city supply, the storm tunnel, and grey water treatment.
Interior
Inside
The Shaft
What the section produces at eye level: bamboo panels filtering the light into the atrium, and studio floors that run deep but stay lit from the spine rather than the perimeter.
Interior, the bamboo atrium panels and daylight from the central shaft
Performance
98 of 110
Scored against LEED across location and transportation, sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality and innovation. The scorecard reaches Platinum at 98 points.
A group project. My work was the interior: the Venturi-driven ventilation shaft and the daylighting that reuses the same geometry, the BIM model the set was drawn from, and much of the wider documentation.
Group
Sofia Smith, Mukai Li, Emanuele Di Paola, Jafar Alsayegh, Noble Nikkel, Santiago Saavedra Ortega.