This is a facility for interdisciplinary research on robotics, sensors, and everywhere that computers meet the physical world and become 'embodied computation'. The building is both an experiment and a research instrument. Just as biologists use a microscope to study organisms, architects will use this structure to study buildings. //

The project is also an open source building, designed to evolve over time, with components and systems that can be swapped and upgraded. It proposes an alternative to architecture that is fixed, iconic, and driven by form or aesthetic signature. //

The building is sustainable since it adjusts to new conditions rather than requiring renovations or a new structure. It also features sustainable systems such as zero-energy radiant heating (via waste condensate from the neighboring building), and passive cooling with no air conditioning. //

The building is the first structure in the United States with a five-ton gantry crane made of timber rather than steel. It is the first building to use salvaged scaffolding boards from New York City construction for its facade, giving new life to material that is otherwise discarded. It is the first building to use sand-blasted wood for its facade, and it led us to invent a CNC-sand blasting machine. And it is one of the first buildings to apply machine learning to the physical world, which we implemented through creating algorithms to detect knots in wood. //

The resulting facade allows us to see materials in a new way, revealing natural variation rather than suppressing it with a lowest-common-denominator approach. It offers a new perspective on buildings as a temporary formation of materials, energy, and labor. Overall, the building suggests a new hybrid design approach that is high-tech and low-tech, familiar and new, functional and aesthetic, digital and biological.

Credits:
- NK Architects - Architect of Record
- Princeton University - Lead Faculty Researcher - Axel Kilian
- Buro Happold - Structural and Mechanical Engineers
- Evan Eisman Studio - Sand Blasting Partner
- Princeton University - Lead Faculty Researcher - Forrest Meggers
- Epic - General Contractor
- Big Resue - Salvaged Material Partner