Swarthmore College Unified Science Center
Swarthmore, Pa.
Einhorn Yaffee Prescott and Helfand Architecture

Einhorn Yaffee Prescott and Helfand Architecture smoothly integrate modernist forms with traditional materials

© Jeff Goldberg / Esto

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

By Suzanne Stephens

In renovating and adding onto an existing science facility, Swarthmore College faced an old dilemma. The college wanted to create a contemporary architectural response befitting an evolving program, yet not jeopardize the cohesion and spirit of the campus’s historic architecture. Located on the edge of a 200-acre woods, the college, founded in 1864 by the Hicksite Quakers—the more liberal branch of the Society of Friends—was, and still is, coeducational and fiercely intellectual.

The campus displays its fair share of architectural styles, including the central building, Parrish Hall, a Second Empire–style, mansard-roof affair dating to 1881, plus superbly iconic examples of Collegiate Gothic buildings by Karcher and Smith, such as Clothier Hall, designed in 1929, and Worth Hall, a dormitory built in 1924. Although Swarthmore’s architecture has taken on a variegated look over the years, the campus buildings are unified by the pervasive use of local stones, most notably Wissahickon schist, glinting of silver and gold mica. Yet the DuPont Science Center, designed by Vincent Kling in 1958, egregiously diverged from the campus mien. The Modern rectilinear center, clad in a yellow-tan precast-concrete aggregate panel, has always struck a jarringly tacky note. Fortunately, it needed to be updated and expanded.

For economic reasons, the college wanted to keep most (69,000 square feet) of DuPont, adding 75,000 square feet of new construction for science classrooms, laboratories, offices, and a student commons. The new addition would also link physically to an adjacent library, along with Martin Hall, a handsome, Moderne-style stone biology building, designed in 1937 by Cram and Ferguson.The college first brought in Einhorn Yaffee and Prescott (EYP) of Boston to program the spaces.

Swarthmore also valued the design sensibilities of Margaret Helfand, FAIA, of Helfand Architecture (HA; formerly Helfand Myerberg Guggenheimer), who in 1996 had designed the Modernist stone-clad Kohlberg Hall [RECORD, February 1997, page 70]. So the college (Schall, Bloom, and the Science Center Planning Committee) proposed an arranged marriage between the two firms for the job. Cahal Stephens, AIA, of EYP would be the principal in charge, and Helfand the design principal.

Want the full story? Read the entire article in our December 2004 issue.
Subscribe to Architectural Record in print, or get Architectural Record digitally

Formal name of Project:
Swarthmore College Unified Science Center

Location:
Swarthmore, Pa.

Gross square footage:
69,000 sq. ft. renovation, 75,000 sq. ft. new construction

Total construction cost:
$48.2 Million

Owner:
Swarthmore College

Architect:
Einhorn Yaffee Prescott
24 School Street
Boston MA 02108
617. 305. 9800
www.eypae.com

Helfand Architecture
552 Broadway, 6th floor
New York, NY 10012
212. 925. 9390
www.helfandarch.com