'Taki' honored by new building
David Stephenson
Issue date: 11/20/09 Section: News
The new Papadakis Integrated Sciences Building is a 130,000 square-foot, five-story home for both students and faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences. The design calls for expanded space for faculty and graduate research, as well as new faculty office space. While the first floor has room for lecture classes, the other floors include new teaching laboratories for biology, biomedical engineering and organic chemistry.
"We came to see what the freshmen are going to get. We're jealous [that] we're not going to get much time in it," Maliha Ahmed, a senior biology major who attended Tuesday's event, said.
As a sophomore studying bio-science, Louie Parliaros will get to spend more time in the new building.
"I'll be around when they open it up and hopefully I'll get to have some classes in it," Parliaros said. "I'm planning on going on to a graduate program here; I [think] it's great that Drexel focuses on science."
It has been announced that construction will be completed by July 2011. As previously reported in The Triangle, the date was pushed back from earlier estimates due to the University bidding the project out to several different construction firms in order to take advantage of lower construction costs during the economic downturn.
A phrase that seemed to be used by all of the speakers at the groundbreaking ceremony was that the new building was "eco-friendly." As well as various high-tech lighting and architectural elements in the design, the building will include a four-story bio-wall, which will filter the structure's air conditioning through biological material as a replacement for less efficient air filtering methods. The U.S. Green Building Council awarded the building's design a Silver LEED certification, making it Drexel's most eco-friendly building and the first academic institution in the nation to have a bio-wall.
"When you go into the building you just have this feeling of being in a park, so it's psychologically sustainable too," Murasko lauded when describing the new building and its bio-wall feature.
"We came to see what the freshmen are going to get. We're jealous [that] we're not going to get much time in it," Maliha Ahmed, a senior biology major who attended Tuesday's event, said.
As a sophomore studying bio-science, Louie Parliaros will get to spend more time in the new building.
"I'll be around when they open it up and hopefully I'll get to have some classes in it," Parliaros said. "I'm planning on going on to a graduate program here; I [think] it's great that Drexel focuses on science."
It has been announced that construction will be completed by July 2011. As previously reported in The Triangle, the date was pushed back from earlier estimates due to the University bidding the project out to several different construction firms in order to take advantage of lower construction costs during the economic downturn.
A phrase that seemed to be used by all of the speakers at the groundbreaking ceremony was that the new building was "eco-friendly." As well as various high-tech lighting and architectural elements in the design, the building will include a four-story bio-wall, which will filter the structure's air conditioning through biological material as a replacement for less efficient air filtering methods. The U.S. Green Building Council awarded the building's design a Silver LEED certification, making it Drexel's most eco-friendly building and the first academic institution in the nation to have a bio-wall.
"When you go into the building you just have this feeling of being in a park, so it's psychologically sustainable too," Murasko lauded when describing the new building and its bio-wall feature.
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