To develop the Roger E. Susi Interdisciplinary Research Building, a showcase for collaboration, connection and inspiration, Case Western Reserve retained HGA, a national architecture and engineering firm with deep experience in science and technology, and its prominent design principal Peter D. Cook.
Cook and his colleagues delivered. On the outside, large glass expanses offer a modern, welcoming face to both the Case Quad and the broader community passing by on Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Boulevard, which was previously lined with a nearly uninterrupted wall of the backsides of campus buildings.
“Our approach prioritized opening the campus in a more transparent and inviting way,” said Cook, the building’s lead designer. “That stretch of MLK Boulevard is transformed by removing physical barriers that closed off the university to a now more welcoming and accessible face to the surrounding community.”
To the north, the landscaped Tinkham Veale Gateway and hillside with a walkway and benches offers access between MLK Boulevard and the Case Quad, featuring The Kelvin & Eleanor Smith Foundation Terrace, a 2,000-square-foot gathering space at the Susi Building’s east entrance.
For Julian Rogers (MNO ’08), CWRU’s associate vice president for local government and community relations, that’s important for engaging with community members—some of whom drive past the western side of campus unaware of what’s beyond the wall of buildings. “Once people know that we’re here, then it sparks ideas, [such as] ‘Is this somewhere maybe I want to go?’” Rogers said. “Things like that won’t happen if people don’t know we’re even here.”
Inside the building, a café, grand atrium, broad hallways, ample soft seating and windowed labs are all designed to draw people together.
The facility also includes original art—both new commissions and purchases of existing works of photography, graphic designs, drawings, mosaics, sculptures and interactive pieces by alumni and other artists. “For a building of this size, scale and importance, we developed a new collection of art,” said Kathy Barrie, director of the university’s Putnam Art Collection. The collection will help establish the building’s distinctive character, she said, “inspire and provoke new thinking, and underscore that this is a space built for creativity and experimentation.”
Cook, whose prior projects include the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., believes that the success of a building is not measured only by what happens within the four walls, but by what happens outside them.
“It will be exciting to see the impact that this building has, not only to foster breakthrough moments in science, but also to encourage connections across campus and beyond,” he said.
The five-story, 189,000-square-foot Susi Building is organized around seven research clusters: James M. Galm, PhD, PE Electrochemical Engineering & Energy Science, Advanced Materials & Manufacturing; Molecular Therapeutics; Precision Diagnostics & Therapeutics; NeuroTechnology; NeuroRobotics; and Climate & Ecosystem Science.
