UC Merced Science and Engineering Building II
Architect: SmithgroupJJR
Awards: LEED Platinum
The $ 70 million, 102,000 sq.ft. facility provides research and instructional labs spaces with additional core facilities. In addition, the offices and computational and wet labs on the upper levels, breakout rooms with adjacent balconies provides collaboration space with sweeping vistas of the undeveloped landscape, and future campus expansion. The building systems utilizes chilled and heating hot water generated by the highly efficient UC Merced Campus Central Plant. A state of the art HVAC system was designed which consists of a distributed heating and cooling coupled to a heat recovery VAV air handling and lab exhaust systems. These systems helped the building achieve LEED Platinum Certification through the U.S. Green Building Council. Based on UC Merced’s energy dashboard, SE 2 outperform the LEED Gold certified SE1 by 50% and manages to use less energy than several non-energy intensive facilities. These include other LEED Platinum certified classroom buildings and libraries.