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Project and site organization
The Frist Health Center is organized around a central atrium that connects three distinct wings, each serving a unique purpose. Eno Hall, a historic campus classroom building constructed in 1924, is now a modern workplace supporting Princeton’s Health Services program. Outpatient Medical Services and Counseling and Psychological Services (CPS) occupy the two newly constructed wings, which extend outward along key campus pathways, Guyot Lane and Goheen Walk.
Courtyards, green roofs, a winter garden, and diverse plant life create a calming, restorative environment. Pathways and gardens of varying character enhance the experience, inviting choice, exploration, and discovery. Expansive glass curtain walls connect the interiors to surrounding gardens and campus landscape, infusing the building’s heart with life and greenery. Sunlight filters through decorative, biophilic metal sunshades, managing solar heat gain while animating the space with intricate shadow patterns.
Integrating landscape, architecture, and wellness
With its finely tuned interrelationship between landscape and architecture, the Princeton campus offers a distinctive and memorable experience, with connection to gardens in its DNA. 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, while improving accessibility for the campus community.
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. Medical services encompass outpatient medical, global and community health, occupational health, and an overnight infirmary.
With spaces like the atrium, the McLain Pavilion for Well-Being (a multi-purpose room), the Isabella McCosh Garden (an indoor-outdoor room filled with plants), 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.
“The Frist Health Center was designed to create a warm, welcoming, healing and inviting environment. We envisioned it as a comforting destination for students, ill and well. The expansive building’s soaring atrium and connections to nature make for a beautiful, calming space.”
Atrium: heart and connective tissue
The heart and connective tissue of the Frist Health Center is the atrium—a transparent and transient collector space that serves as the building’s main point of entry, accessible from three sides. More than just a passageway, the atrium welcomes the campus community with a gracious lounge and informal social spaces. With no singular entryway, the atrium itself becomes the building’s front door, seamlessly linking each wing to the services housed within.
The interior of this triple-height space is distinguished by the former façade of Eno Hall. The historic brick integrates with the new mass timber construction to create a rich and warm material palette, imbuing the Frist Health Center with a hospitable feel. Glass surfaces connect the solid wings, while the mass timber “lid” rests atop the existing facade, enclosing a transparent, airy volume.
Adaptive Reuse: Celebrating legacy, minimizing carbon and waste
By repurposing Eno Hall, a Collegiate Gothic building, the Frist Health Center integrates with Princeton’s architectural legacy while minimizing carbon and waste. Reuse of Eno Hall leverages the University’s existing building stock for 21st Century use. Positioning the historic building as a center stage piece in the main atrium, the project expands from reuse to celebration of our built fabric. Additional sustainable design strategies include a radiant heating and cooling system, hybrid mass timber and steel framing systems, green roofs, and native plantings for stormwater management. The winter garden element expands the seasonal use of the building, serving as a threshold element in the colder months and as a “back porch” in the warmer seasons.
By achieving a Carbon Use Intensity (CUI) of 24.0 kgCO₂e/ft², the Frist Health Center exemplifies how thoughtful design and adherence to AIA COTE Top 10 toolkit can lead to substantial reductions in carbon emissions, setting a benchmark for future projects.
Sanctuary: warmth, comfort, and light
The building is enclosed by a high-performance envelope, incorporating triple glazed, operable windows, fixed sunshades, and enhanced R-value with continuous 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.
Air is 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.
Natural light is a key design element, highlighted by the floor-to-ceiling glass curtain wall in the atrium and strategic daylighting throughout. Light reaches the lower level through an east-facing lightwell with clerestory windows and extensive glass walls surrounding the Cloister Garden. Patient spaces, including exam rooms, maximize daylight access with obscured glass for privacy.
Wellness beacon: the McLain Pavilion for Well-Being
Facing the popular Goheen Walk, the 200-person Multipurpose Room hosts a variety of Health Services programs, as well as events for the broader campus. A flexible outdoor terrace adjoining the multi-purpose room offers fresh air and natural light, enhancing the indoor-outdoor experience. Sunken into the ground and capped by a planted roof visible from multiple vantage points within the building, the pavilion invites users to be embedded in the earth.
Baking in choice
A diversity of waiting areas, designed like living rooms with residential-style furnishings and lighting, creates a comforting environment, especially for students seeking mental health support. These spaces, along with the adjacent garden areas, like the Isabella McCosh Garden, offer choice between introspective, intimate settings and more public, social ones, fostering a sense of agency and comfort for both students and staff. Decorative walnut privacy screens provide concealment while allowing natural light to flow through. The emphasis on choice extends to the office spaces, where a diverse material palette mirrors the variety of experiences available throughout the building.
Diversity of spaces
Cross-laminated timber (CLT)
The building features a hybrid mass timber and steel structural system, marking one of Princeton University’s first projects to incorporate CLT. Glulam timber elements form the majority of exposed columns and the longspan beams in the atrium, while CLT panels are used for the floor structure. Beyond providing a smaller carbon footprint than conventional structural systems, the natural, biophilic 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.
Embedding wellness into the campus fabric
Harnessing the Frist Health Center’s proximity to student hubs like dining and recreation, the University is exploring cross-programming opportunities to connect outreach programs to further embed a culture of wellness into the heart of campus.
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Hospitality-inspired design
The care suites, located along the facility’s southern perimeter, feature warm materials and soothing colors to support therapeutic goals. To aid patient stabilization, light fixtures subtly shift color temperature over a 24-hour cycle. Research shows this approach enhances natural circadian rhythms, helping to stabilize moods and sleep patterns often disrupted by mental illness.
Four courtyards bring daylight into common areas while enhancing energy efficiency. Comfortable, light-filled communal areas provide patients and families with warm, inviting spaces to wait, meet, or socialize.
“We are so proud to work with the wonderful crew from WRNS. They are great listeners and are able to put into form the concepts we have shared with them. This project is historical and a model for other regions!”
Tranquility and sense of welcome
Situated on the edge of the Mountain View campus, the building’s façade conveys warmth and openness, evoking a residential or hospitality feel. The entry lobby—a striking two-story glass structure—creates a welcoming focal point amid mature heritage trees, enhancing its inviting presence. The material palette—featuring variegated aluminum panels, terra cotta-colored cement board, and board-formed concrete—harmonizes with ECH’s park-like setting.
Individualized care and community support
The design team collaborated closely with ECH staff to identify best practices for behavioral health facilities—a challenging process due to the scarcity of successful, holistic care models nationwide. This effort included benchmarking, facility tours, and peer review. In response, the treatment model focuses on stabilizing patients in a short-term inpatient setting before transitioning them to outpatient care, all within the same building. Each patient care suite has a group therapy space, a communal kitchen, and a courtyard for access to nature. The suites are modular and can grow or shrink as specialized patient populations change over time.
Safety and security
Trauma-informed design with a hotel-like ambiance. Warm finishes. Private, anti-ligature bath and shower.
Nurse stations that are open and accessible, but with direct, secure exits and integrated security technology.
Using landform to balance privacy to connection to nature.
Enclosure and ample glazing ensure that patients can enjoy outdoor space without direction supervision.
Drawings
A new campus face to the south
36 In-patient beds in flexible suites
Out-patient services
Using courtyards for energy savings and wellness
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Reimagining a 1950s grocery store for modern healthcare
As the Council’s first development in Colusa, the center establishes a forward-looking identity—welcoming, rooted in the area’s history, and open to all. Positioned as a catalyst for future Main Street growth, the Medical Center addresses immediate needs while paving the way for expansion and long-term community development.
Built in the 1950s, the Chung Sun Building’s long-span bow truss structure provides exceptional interior flexibility, allowing the design team to creatively reorient the building toward Main Street. Plans include 13 exam rooms for internal and specialized medicine, a behavioral health clinic, and an optometry store. By adaptively reusing the structure, the project is projected to save up to 20% on construction costs while reducing embodied carbon by an impressive 60%, aligning functionality with environmental stewardship.
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A reimagined campus
Nestled low into the landscape, the reimagined two-story campus now offers a workplace that synthesizes the well-being of both people and the environment. Employees will just as likely delight in their individual workspaces—light-filled spaces crafted of unadorned, honest materials like wood and concrete that look onto vegetated courtyards—as they will the expansive living roof, featuring eateries, fitness amenities, and trails leading out to the nearby creek. regenerating local habitat and site ecology.
Inside-out approach
The inside-out design strategy arose from a deep investigation into workplace culture and operations. While campus leadership sought a community-driven environment, interviews revealed that engineers favored small, quiet spaces for solo or paired work. The solution was a series of human-scaled neighborhoods that balanced privacy and collaboration, fostering a sense of ownership among distinct groups.
We explored nine space types ranging from collaborative to private, ultimately narrowing them to three that struck the right balance. The front-runners offered a flexible platform for authentic, personalized work experiences, while creating an environment where employees could move easily between focus and collaboration. The space types guided our site analyses and allowed us to identify a preferred option that delivers a holistic, inside-out campus experience.
Workplace Interior Design Features
Courtyards scheme: a walkable campus with diverse amenities
Inspired by the dense, mixed-use neighborhoods of great walkable cities, the campus—organized around a series of courtyards—generates a human-scaled experience of discovery and prospect in which people are invited to wander through the workplace, up staircases, around outdoor decks, and along the roof’s many pathways.
The courtyards, featuring regional planting palettes, serve as both community anchors and extensions of the workplace fostering seamless indoor-outdoor connections. With raw, honest materials and a subtly playful palette, interior design draws inspiration from these landscapes.
Organized within close proximity to the workplace neighborhoods, amenities include dispersed and differently scaled gathering areas, recreation zones, food and beverage stops, a café overlooking Stevens Creek in which the whole campus can gather, and a public tech center that houses galleries and a theater.
The “Mashup” Concept
Campus Programs
The main dining amenity on campus is designed as a market hall with multiple food offerings.
This area acts as the heart of the campus, centrally located near the hub courtyard at the intersection of primary circulation pathways across campus. The hospitality vibe attracts people at all times and also serves as the all hands space for the campus.
Located near the fitness and parking areas, the juice bar is a focal point for social interaction, encouraging healthy drink choices as employees enter/ exit the campus after work.
With a capacity of 299 people, the auditorium is ideal for after-hours networking events featuring industry experts and guest speakers, fostering engagement among employees, clients, and the broader Silicon Valley community.
This double height space with a dynamic digital art installation expresses the client’s brand to the external world and is used as a pre-function space for the campus’s conferencing center.
This area showcases the company’s innovative products to dignitaries, executives, and VIP guests. Situated in a re-purposed building on the campus, the CEC reflects the brand’s identity while fostering an intimate, professional atmosphere.
Honest materials for a healthy, timeless workplace
The material palette reflects the company’s identity as an established tech company with a forward-looking approach to sustainability. Honest materials—like exposed mass timber, concrete, and hot-rolled steel—form the structural and interior finishes, while a natural color and texture palette adds warmth and variety.
Material health played a critical role in the design: over 80% of the 300+ interior finishes were Red List-free and included Health Product Declarations (HPDs).
Cross-laminated timber: performance and wellness
As one of North America’s largest mass timber projects at the time of construction, the campus advances ambitious goals for low-carbon construction, employee well-being, and support of local industry. Extensive use of CLT—including structural components that double as interior finishes—offers a warm aesthetic while minimizing materials. This approach resulted in an estimated 36% reduction in embodied carbon.
A spirit of reuse over replacement
In line with the company’s commitment to the circular economy, we opted to reuse two buildings, reducing material waste and minimizing operational disruption. The existing buildings account for 36% of the new campus footprint, significantly reducing embodied carbon.
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Academia-inspired workplace design
The company envisioned a community-driven environment where employees and visitors could engage in the broader dialogue shaping innovation in New York. Taking cues from the city’s porous academic environments, the design balances vibrant social and collaborative areas with spaces for focused, independent work.
The stacks
A variety of flexible, interconnected spaces allow for easy transitions between concentration and collaboration. Inspired by the traditional university library, researchers’ workspaces are divided by “stacks”—custom millwork providing storage, whiteboards, and personal libraries. The combination of wood, books, soft lighting, and hidden nooks evokes an academic atmosphere, ensuring both visual and acoustic privacy for deep focus and teamwork.
Conceptual Planning
The Garage: a public-facing innovation hub
Fostering connections with the broader community, the SoHo workplace features The Garage—a flexible, multipurpose space designed for customer and public events. The space also serves as a dynamic maker space and learning lab where employees can experiment and collaborate. Retractable walls allow The Garage to expand into adjacent areas, including a multipurpose theater that accommodates up to 120 guests. Located on the second floor—the largest floorplate—it is easily accessed from the street and lobby.
Vertical connectivity
A dynamic communicating stair links the floors, creating a fluid connection between different work modes and levels. Crafted from blackened steel and stainless steel cable, the stair nods to SoHo’s iconic cast iron buildings and fire escapes, paying homage to the neighborhood’s rich history of creativity and craftsmanship.
Gathering and dining
The sixth floor serves as a central gathering space where employees can dine and relax. A casual tea room opens onto a large wrap-around terrace, offering flexible seating and tables that can be easily reconfigured for any group size or event. Additional meeting rooms and informal social spaces throughout the building provide employees with different options for working and socializing.
Connecting interior design with Soho’s iconic streetscape
Materials knit this workplace together. The extensive use of cherry wood ties the interior to the adjacent, iconic brick façade of the Puck Building, creating a warm, inviting “heart” visible from the street. Rough concrete tile wraps around the building’s core, reflecting the urban character and energy of the surrounding neighborhood.
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Bringing new life to an historic building
Built in 1902 in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, the two-story Joseph W. Podmore Building is one of the few surviving cut-stone structures constructed from native lava rock. Once home to tenants like the Honolulu Advertiser and the original Honolulu DHL Office, this iconic structure is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Its rich history set the stage for Podmore’s unique blend of preservation and innovation.
The Hidden Treasures
Design rooted in context
Podmore’s large windows along Merchant and Alakea Streets connect the space to the bustling street life while framing intimate seating areas. Built-in and loose furniture align with the building’s original fenestration, maximizing seating while respecting the historic layout. English influences—such as rich, dark colors, brass accents, and intricate moldings—add warmth and sophistication, while curved forms and reflective finishes lighten the palette, creating a layered, dynamic interior.
Spaces that invite exploration
The seating arrangements differentiate distinct zones—lounge, nook, booths, corner, and counter—encouraging guests to request a new spot with each visit. Toward the back, a cozy lounge with a lower ceiling feels intimate and private, enhanced by a wisteria mural that cleverly conceals storage. Curved booth seating and bar counters also integrate hidden storage, balancing function with elegance.
Design Process
Craft and preservation in harmony
To enhance the building’s grandeur, the design team reworked structural reinforcements and HVAC systems to maximize ceiling heights and reduce visual clutter. Large-pattern flooring adds scale and drama, while every design element reflects Podmore’s commitment to craft—from its carefully curated finishes to its exceptional culinary and cocktail offerings. By retrofitting the historic Podmore Building, the restaurant/bar not only preserves its legacy but also provides guests with a transformative, elevated experience.
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Comfort, light, and low carbon
Focused on comfort, natural light, fresh air, and low carbon, the all-electric design includes radiant floors, ceiling fans in learning spaces, an induction cooktop, and operable windows that reduce mechanical ventilation by 25%.
Daylight autonomy was key in driving planning and building envelope design. At-grade glass planks along the building perimeter, plus skylights in key areas, ensure good daylight balance in teaching spaces, creating a healthy and vibrant learning environment. This strategy drives daylight into the lower levels, making them vibrant spaces for learning and socializing. Exterior automated shades help mitigate heat load and glare while providing good daylight usage.
Flexibility and connectivity for dynamic learning
Movable walls provide educational flexibility, linking indoor and outdoor activities, while multifunctional spaces—including project work rooms—across three floors encourage social engagement and mentorship.
Creative spaces—including digital media, ceramics, painting, maker labs, and performance studios—are threaded throughout the building to dissolve boundaries between academics, art, and hands-on learning.
High performance and net zero energy
With its high-performance envelope, strategic daylighting, and efficient mechanical systems, this energy-intensive project achieves a projected EUI of 20.1. A 346 kW rooftop PV array will offset all energy use, delivering a Net Zero Energy, all-electric building.
High-Performance Design
Contributes to Net Zero Energy design
South-facing PV offsets all energy use while north-facing skylights filter light deep below
Exposed to educate
Creating campus continuity, enriching student life
The building’s materials, massing, and circulation establish a sense of continuity with the campus’s architectural centerpiece, the Romanesque “Old Main” building from 1898, while establishing a new campus gateway. WRNS redesigned the Mall to enliven the quad and strengthen connections to campus buildings and pathways. An amphitheater adjacent to band facilities flows into the landscape, supporting performances, events, and outdoor learning.
A natural palette of brick, wood, and metal adds visual interest, with unique features like a perforated aluminum “crinkled curtain.” Together, the building and landscape enrich the student experience, fostering diverse opportunities for learning and engagement.
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Dynamic spaces for evolving learning needs
The new Technology, Lecture, and Band Classroom Building at Crocker Middle School sits on the campus’s northern edge. It brings together a 100-seat lecture hall, computer classrooms, staff offices, a television production classroom, and a band rehearsal space—offering a dynamic environment where music, technology, and computer sciences intersect. The design supports evolving pedagogies by thoughtfully organizing these diverse programs into a single building, with flexible spaces that adapt to changing educational needs.
Flexible learning environments
Designed for adaptability, the classrooms accommodate various seating configurations and feature power and data service at each table to support laptop use. Instructors benefit from access to projector screens, whiteboards, and Smart Tablet technology. The band room is designed to host ensembles of all sizes, from intimate jazz groups to a 100-seat symphonic band. Large operable windows flood the spaces with natural light and promote ventilation.
Sensitive campus integration
This addition to the Crocker Middle School campus respects the existing pathways connecting the upper and lower portions of the site. Its material palette—stained wood siding, cement plaster, and painted concrete columns—harmonizes with the campus’s mid-century architecture and its wooded surroundings. Over time, the unpainted wood has developed a patina, further blending with its environment.
Setting a standard for sustainable, healthy design
The project emphasizes sustainability and indoor air quality, setting a precedent for the district’s future standards. Materials such as linoleum and plant-based woven textiles were selected for their low VOC content and regional suitability. The landscape design features drought-tolerant plants, offering students a tangible opportunity to learn about the region’s climate. The project was designed to meet Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS) standards, aligning with the district’s commitment to sustainability.
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Where collaboration fuels scientific discovery
The Joan and Irwin Jacobs Science and Technology Center will build off the innovative designs in Louis Kahn’s original buildings to promote collaboration and interaction across disciplines, while allowing for expanded research capabilities to tackle the scientific challenges of our time. Spaces to connect in shared purpose, wonder, and community will be ascendant.
A variety of new research environments—wet and dry labs, biological computation space, prototyping and testing areas, team-based neighborhoods, and ample informal gathering space—will help scientists work with great efficiency and intersectional synergy. Inspired by Jonas Salk’s dream of an “institute without walls,” science will be visible and impediments to collaboration will be minimized for current and future Salk scientists.
In service of the research it houses, the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Science and Technology Center will help sustain our natural environment. Efforts to reduce its carbon footprint include a cast-in-place structural system which considered approaches to optimizing performance for resilience and reduction in carbon footprint for the building. Energy conservation strategies like green roofs, photovoltaics, and passive and natural ventilation will help achieve sustainable operation, typically challenging in such a technically complex and specialized environment.
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