The official dedication of the LSC will take place in November, as workers are still optimizing the lighting and heating systems and finishing the audiovisual equipment installations, according to biology department chair Thomas Jack.
One of the "founding principles" of the LSC's design was to increase energy efficiency, according to Jack. Tight sealing of the envelope around the building and triple-paned windows help prevent heat loss, while metal rods outside the windows of the stairwells reduce the amount of sunlight entering the building, thereby preventing overheating, Jack said.
Because federal law requires that potentially toxic air in laboratories is exchanged with clean air from outside four to seven times per hour, the LSC uses heat recovery wheels and the escaping warm air to help heat cold air from outside. Warm air inside the building passes near a membrane that helps heat incoming air while keeping the air streams separate, which lowers heating costs, Jack said.
"In a climate like [Hanover's], this saves a huge amount of money," he said. "You need much less energy to heat the air because you can recover a lot of the heat."
Jack said that although the LSC is twice the size of Gilman Hall, where the biology department was previously located, it is estimated to use about half the energy that was necessary to run Gilman and Centerra Biolabs, which accommodated seven biology department faculty members from 2004 to 2011.
A "rain garden" outside the LSC will catch runoff water from the traffic circle, according to Jack. Rainwater from the building's roof is also stored in underground tanks and used as a "gray water source" for the building, according to Jack.
The increased space provided by the LSC allows all biological science classes, office hours and lab hours to be held in a centralized location, Jack said. Some science classes with large enrollments were previously held in Cook Auditorium near the Tuck School of Business, he said.
The LSC provides areas in which students and faculty can relax, study and hold office hours. On the ground level to the right of the entrance sit four sets of couches and tables, with each set surrounding a glass display of various science-related models.
An archway of colored lights leads to the gallery of couches. When turned on, the lights cycle between different colors, creating a "very nice ambiance," Josh Rivers '15 said.
Sitting spaces and lounges throughout the second and third floors of the building make the LSC feel less "clinical" than Gilman, biology professor David Peart said.
"New study spaces and places for students just to hang out and relax really humanizes the place," he said. "You want it to be a place that the students enjoy being in. The old building was a place that people tried to get out of as fast as they could."
The LSC includes the Arvo J. Oopik '78 auditorium, with a 200-person capacity, as well as two classrooms that hold 80 people each and two classrooms for 30 people, according to Jack. All classrooms contain television screens, whiteboards and rolling chairs. Some classrooms boast flat screen panels and mobile desks, which facilitate group workshops in smaller classes.
The building also houses 30 faculty offices, five faculty labs, six teaching labs, five types of classrooms and a greenhouse, according to Jack. Classes in other departments such as computer science and geography are also taught in the new building, and faculty members from other science departments conduct research there as well, Jack said.
The research labs are built according to the "open lab concept" in which six faculty labs share the space of one large room, splitting the five research labs into a total of 30 faculty spaces. Aubrey Frank and Nathanael Prunet, both post-doctoral students in the plant development lab, said the open space fosters more interesting discussions and better results in the lab.
Adrienne Perkins, a second-year graduate student of biology at Dartmouth Medical School, said she was very impressed with not only the cleanliness of the building but also the extra space that it provides.
"We each now have our own plant rooms in the basement, so if someone has an infestation [of insects] our plants won't get infested, unlike in the previous building where everyone had to suffer," Perkins said.
Teaching labs have also been improved by the design of the LSC, Jack said. The labs now include built-in projectors and screens, as well as separate rooms for the students' belongings. A special corridor adjacent to the lab houses loud equipment that previously made conversation difficult, he said.
The new greenhouse on the fourth floor of the building is twice the size of the Gilman greenhouse, according to Jack. Sections of the new greenhouse including many rooms of tropical plants and an extensive orchid collection donated by Alan Brout '51 are open to the public from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Jack said.
The lower level of the LSC comprises rooms dedicated to research, including walk-in plant growth chambers, rooms with various tanks for fish and lizards, specialty microscope rooms and a nuclear magnetic resonance machine that uses a strong magnetic field to determine the structure of complicated molecules. Although most of the floor is underground, the sloping landscape allows windows on the north side of the lower level.
Undergraduate students interviewed by The Dartmouth said they were generally pleased with the design of the new building. Some students, however, said the building is too far from the rest of campus.
"I'm always late to the LSC for my [Computer Science 8] class because it's so far away," Andrew Roberts '14 said.
