Frist Health Center at Princeton Advancing a culture of wellness
- Client Princeton University
- Location Princeton, NJ
- Size 74,670 sq ft
- Completion Est. 2025
- Program Counseling, psychological, and medical services; health promotion and prevention services; sexual harassment/assault advising, resources and education
- Sustainability Targeting LEED Gold
- Delivery CM-at-Risk
Princeton envisioned the Frist Health Center as a new campus hub that weaves health and well-being into everyday life, fostering a “culture of wellness.” Located in the heart of campus, the project expands healthcare access while enhancing Princeton’s distinctive sense of place. More than just a clinic, the Frist Health Center serves as a campus-wide amenity, offering a range of inviting indoor and outdoor spaces designed to welcome students for more than traditional healthcare.
A welcoming campus amenity
Emphasizing holistic health, the project brings together counseling and psychological services, health promotion and prevention, and sexual harassment/assault advising, resources, and education (SHARE). Medical services encompass outpatient medical, global and community health, occupational health, and an overnight infirmary. With spaces like the atrium, multi-purpose room, winter garden, and cloister garden, the Frist Health Center encourages students to use its spaces to study, socialize, and recharge, helping to destigmatize access to care while nurturing a connected, inclusive campus experience.
Princeton Campus: Buildings Framing Gardens
Princeton Campus: Buildings in Gardens
Concept: Buildings and Gardens as One
Integrating landscape, architecture, and wellness
With its finely tuned interrelationship between landscape and architecture, the Princeton campus offers a distinctive and memorable experience. This relationship reflects two campus planning legacies: Olmsted’s romantic vision of free-standing buildings in park-like settings and Ralph Adams Cram’s master plan, which weaves individual buildings together around enclosed courtyards with pathways and portals. Recognizing the role of human behavior and environmental factors in holistic health, we focused on seamlessly integrating the building with the landscape, celebrating Princeton’s rich planning legacy.
Central atrium
The Frist Health Center is organized around a central atrium that connects three distinct wings, each serving a unique purpose. Eno Hall, an historic campus lab building constructed in 1924, has been reimagined as a modern workplace, with facilities supporting Princeton’s Health Services program. The other primary components—Outpatient Medical Services and Counseling and Psychological Services (CPS)—occupy the two new wings, which extend outward to embrace key campus pathways, Guyot Lane and Goheen Walk.
Integrated with the landscape, the project incorporates courtyards, green roofs, and diverse plant life to create a calming, restorative environment. Pathways and gardens of varying character enhance the experience, inviting choice, exploration, and discovery. Expansive curtain walls on the other three sides of the atrium connect the interior to the surrounding gardens and campus landscape, infusing the building’s heart with life and greenery.
Adaptive reuse: celebrating legacy, minimizing carbon and waste
By repurposing Eno Hall, a Victorian Gothic building, the Frist Health Center integrates with Princeton’s architectural legacy while minimizing carbon and waste. Reuse of Eno Hall supports Princeton’s sustainability strategy to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2046. Additional sustainable design strategies include a geothermal heating and cooling system, radiant panels, mass timber framing, green roofs, and native plantings for stormwater management.
Living-room style waiting areas
A diversity of waiting areas are designed like living rooms, with residential-style furnishings and lighting that create a comforting environment, especially for students seeking mental health support. Decorative privacy screens provide concealment while allowing natural light to flow through.
Sanctuary: warmth, comfort, and light
Incorporates triple glazing, fixed sunshades, and enhanced R-value with mineral wool insulation in the cavity behind the brick cladding. This strategy supports the use of radiant heating and cooling, promoting energy efficiency and occupant comfort.
Ducted directly into each room, preventing air exchange between spaces and reducing the spread of airborne pathogens. A warm, textured palette with exposed timber enriches the atmosphere, offering a welcoming contrast to typical sterile healthcare environments.
A key design element, highlighted by a floor-to-ceiling glass curtain wall in the atrium and strategic daylighting throughout. Light reaches the lower level through east-facing light wells and a south glass wall, with screens moderating light to balance thermal comfort, privacy, and daylight. Patient spaces, including exam rooms, maximize daylight access with obscured glass for privacy.
Cross-laminated timber (CLT)
The structure features a mass timber and steel hybrid system, marking Princeton University’s first design to incorporate CLT. Glulam forms the majority of columns and horizontal beams in the atrium, while CLT panels are used for flooring. Beyond providing the smallest carbon footprint of all structural systems, the natural beauty of wood as a primary interior finish supports the building’s performance and wellness goals. Here, wellness is truly in the woodwork, with every design element crafted to inspire holistic health.
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