North Carolina State University, Cates Chilled Water Plant

Raleigh, North Carolina

Firm

BBH Design, PA

Client

North Carolina State University

Area

34,000 sq.ft.

Total Cost

$13,800,996

Completion Date

05/2006

The Cates Chiller Plant is a 34,000-square-foot addition that mixes brick veneer with a modern expression of metal and glass. The facility ultimately will accommodate six chillers and cooling towers for a total chilled-water capacity of 12,000 tons.
The concept for the design was to reflect and express the needs of the campus (brick), machines (metal) and humans (glass-light-views). All three were developed as a response to the challenge of inserting and expressing a machine-like building into the heart of the university campus. The design was sympathetic to the surrounding campus fabric and existing plant.
The primary building is rendered as a metal box, clad in insulated metal panels, punctuated by large expanses of glazing. The metal panels are structural, allowing for decreases in construction time and costs. The exposed metal stair also was designed to be relocated as a unit as part of a phased expansion. A metal grating system on the building’s perimeter allowed the structural columns to pass by the floor system to ventilate air up from the pump room.