Thole Ansty's notebook for Bellwick University, left behind after the shortlist interview. The hypothesis, the method and the results are all here, and you can rerun them.
A chemistry lab can't reuse its air. Every cubic foot is heated or cooled once, pulled across the bench and pushed out the roof. That one fact decides what a science building costs for the next fifty years, so it's where we started.
The design approach in a sentence each. Stack by air and by hours, then keep the quietest work on the rock.
Shortest duct to the roof means the least fan power, and hoods stay out of the floors that don't need them. Fewer hoods, grouped in shared alcoves, set the size of the whole air system.
Twelve labs booked by the registrar, not by a department. Glass faces the path so a first-year walking to class can see titration at 8 p.m.
NMR and microscopy go below grade on an isolated slab, the one place on Quarry Lawn where a passing truck doesn't show up in the data.
Change the lab module, the hoods and the air changes. The section redraws, the air moves, and the numbers below are the ones our engineers would give you.
| Run | Module | Hoods | ACH | cfm | EUI | Tons | Cost |
|---|
Air is only half the waste. A lab that's empty at 3 p.m. is still paid for. Scrub the day, then change the stacking and watch the red hatching leave.
Every science building we finish gets measured a year later, and we publish the miss. Here's what we predicted and what the meters said.
Six named people, all on staff. Pick a phase and see how much of each person Bellwick gets.
Bellwick can stop at any gate. A gate is a signed drawing set, an updated cost, and a rerun of the air model with the meters we'd promise.
A notebook page isn't finished until someone else has read it. Each of you gets a page with your question, our answer and something to test it with.
Will this hold the science enrollment we've told the trustees to expect?
Yes, and the way it does it is scheduling. Shared labs run 12 sections a week against 8 when a department holds the key, so the same room serves half again as many students.
What does this cost me after the ribbon's cut?
Run B saves $187,531 a year in energy at today's rates, and costs $5.35M less to build than the campus standard. Pick your escalator and see forty years of it.
When a chemist leaves and a biologist arrives, how long is that lab dark?
Services drop from an overhead carrier and benches roll. Hoods are the only fixed thing, and they sit in shared alcoves on the corridor side. Pick a turnover.
Will my colleagues be asked, or just told?
Fourteen sessions before the drawings freeze, a full-size mock-up lab on Quarry Lawn you can break, and a published list of what each group decides. Pick your group.
Does this building fit inside the 2040 pledge, counting what it took to build?
It does at Run B, and it doesn't at Run A. Your thirty-year budget for this building is 60,000 tons. Change the structure, the heating and the grid.
Run A and Run B. Ink is thirty years of running, highlighter is what it took to build.
Check or strike any line. A struck line stays on the page with what changes written beside it, the way a correction should.
We'd keep every line. If the committee needs one out, strike the interiors first, since Bellwick's own planners know that work. Keep the air study and the first-year tune. Those two are how the hypothesis gets proved.
Monthly, against percent complete in each phase, net 30. Nothing's billed past a gate until you sign that gate.
Bellwick does, once they're paid for. You can hand them to another firm at any gate.
If bids come in more than 8 percent over the $124M budget, we redesign to budget at no extra fee.
The first-year tune holds $105,000 of fee until the meters read within 10 percent of the model, or we've found out why.
The fee's fixed by line. A change in program over 5 percent of gross area reopens the affected phases, in writing, before work starts.
Professional liability of $10M per claim. Licensed in the state, engineers of record on staff.
Open question. Your safety office hasn't ruled on 6 air changes for chemistry. If they hold at 8, Run B's air rises to 60,480 cfm. Construction still clears $124M, but carbon runs 108 tons a year over, and we'd have to find that elsewhere.
Open question. Do chemists accept shared hood alcoves at 3 people per hood? We'll test that on the mock-up, in front of them, in spring 2027.
Open question. Where does Anvers Hall's research go in 2031 and 2032? Decanting isn't in this fee because the answer may be that nothing moves until the new building opens.
The last page of the book. Your initials from the earlier pages carry over here.