The Gates Center for Computer Science has generated much controversy on campus due to both its cost and design. This project for a new facility for the School of Computer Science first began when the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation presented $20 million to Carnegie Mellon University. However, the total budget approved for the Gates Center has escalated to $88.6 million, the largest sum of money Carnegie Mellon has ever spent on a building.

Ralph Horgan, vice provost for campus design and facility development, estimates that hard construction costs themselves will be around $64 million; soft costs, such as architecture and engineering fees, asbestos abatement, demolition, utility relocations, furniture, wireless instructional technology, and other amenities, are projected to be $24 million. Because the amount received from the Gates Foundation – a charitable organization headed by Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda – is not enough to cover the total cost, $32.7 million is still in the process of being raised from other sources and a new bond issue is expected to provide the remaining $35.9 million.

In regard to the bond issue, the University will be borrowing $100 million over the next several months to accommodate smaller projects in addition to the Gates Center. Since interest rates are presently low and the University is able to borrow at tax-exempt rates as a non-profit organization, it is an ideal time for borrowing money. The actual rates that will be paid have not yet been established, as they are subject to the markets and the school's credit rating; collectively, these will be determined by rating agencies.

At the moment, the Carnegie Mellon is $300 million in debt in the form of tax-exempt bonds that will mature between 2025 and 2034. With the additional $100 million being borrowed, the total debt will be $400 million. While this does sound as if it is a high number, the school does have a debt reserve to pay off the bonds. The last time the amount in the debt reserve was calculated, on February 28, there was $128.5 million. Based on approximations, there should be an adequate amount in the reserve to pay back the bonds and their principal in the next twenty to thirty years.

"This is a burden that can, and, I believe, must be accommodated," said Carnegie Mellon President Jared Cohon.

Because the facility is meant to be an asset to the University, Carnegie Mellon has been taking both care and time in developing designs, choosing architects, as well as planning which programs will be moved into the building. The University Design Review Committee has met numerous times and has approved of the basic massing, building form, and site for the project. However, the material for the exterior, or skin, of the building has not yet been agreed upon. Twenty percent of the design fee, about $1.5 million, has already been paid.

An architecture selection committee chose Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects as the architecture firm to design the Gates Center. This committee was led by Chris Gabriel, the vice provost and chief technology officer in 2005, and composed of three faculty members from the School of Computer Science and two from the School of Architecture, and three members of the Board of Trustees. The selection decision took five months of careful observation of the buildings designed by the firm and discussion with residents of those buildings.

The American Institute of Architects has accredited Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects with over fifty national and regional awards of excellence. Many of the company's projects have included academic buildings, featured on the campuses of Arizona State University, the University of California at Berkley, Clemson University, Emory University, Tulane University, and Wellesley College, not to mention that their design of the Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State University was featured in Architectural Record magazine in May.

While it is obvious that Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects is a very talented and accomplished firm, there are still questions to be raised regarding the design of the Gates Center. Dr. Volker Hartkopf, director of the Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics and professor of architecture at Carnegie Mellon, asserts that the architects' design is a "looming disaster" because it was developed in "stealth mode, namely without the involvement of the Design Review Committee and the Green Practices Committee, until recently, when the project was already entering the design development stage." The committees have not had much input on the actual design of the building and, consequently, the design now suffers from criticism.

The Gates Center is to be private but simultaneously open to the campus community. The buildings will serve as a pathway from the Cut to the new West Campus Quadrangle and as well as to Craig Street. One of the difficulties the architecture firm encountered was connecting the buildings to the Cut, which is over 80 feet above the lowest point of the West Campus Quad. The firm solved this problem by connecting the Cut near the Purnell Center for the Arts to the upper floors of the larger building.

The two buildings the Gates Center will take up 5.6 acres, or 209,000 square feet, of the West Campus and will be surrounded by Cyert Hall, Purnell, Doherty Hall, Newell-Simon Hall, Smith and Hamburg Halls, and the Collaborative Innovation Center. Fifty percent of the Gates Center buildings will be used for 318 offices for faculty, 18 percent for labs, 15 percent for common areas such as computer clusters, lecture halls, and a 250-seat auditorium, 13 percent for classrooms, and four percent for planetary robotics. Most of these facilities will be in the larger building, except for planetary robotics, which will most likely be moved to the smaller building.

The larger building stands at six-stories high. The first three levels are the most public part of the center, as it includes an elliptical ramp, computer cluster, café, and main lobby area.

The smaller building, which will be approximately 50,000 square feet and four-stories high, will be dedicated to research. It is shaped like a trapezoid and will face Forbes Avenue between Cyert and Hamburg Halls.

The Gates Center will also have an underground parking garage to provide space for 150 vehicles.

Hartkopf felt that the interior is designed so that there is not much room to make spatial changes without having to pay enormous costs and implementing massive construction. However, Guy Blelloch, the Building and Program Committee coordinator for the School of Computer Science, commended the design of the interior for the use of natural lighting in offices and for the spatial setup within the building.

While the interior of the building sounds promising, doubt regarding the exterior still remains because it will not look anything like the traditional buildings Henry Hornbostle, the architect of the original Carnegie Mellon buildings, designed. Thus far, the Design Review Committee agrees that the exterior will be made of the highest quality so as to last for a century at the very least. Scogin suggests that the skin of the building will be made of dark surface material, composed of 52 percent solid zinc or slate and 48 percent glass windows to bring natural light into the offices. In the present design, the sizes and placements of the windows differ, but all offices have natural light on their exterior. In addition, most classrooms will have windows.

"Early on in our preliminary planning meetings it was suggested that it was time to move beyond the 'yellow brick road of the Hornbostel style,'" said Horgan. "The challenges of the site presented an opportunity to move in a new direction."

In actuality, this is the main concern for the Gates Center for Computer Science. It is a deviation from the Hornbostel style, characterized by its yellow bricks, with which the majority of the campus buildings are associated. The new Gates Center is designed to be contemporary, like Warner, Scaife, Cyert, and Wean Halls, which were already built with the intent of diverging from the Hornbostel style. It is true that these academic buildings succeed in standing out on campus, but they also result in breaking up the aesthetic unity of the campus. At the moment, there are two quadrants made up of Hornbostel style buildings. Some critics of the Gates Center ask why the University does not use the new facility as an opportunity to continue the Hornbostel style when making another quadrant in the West Campus. Also, Hartkopf expressed concerns that without solar and daylight management, the windows may cause energy and glare problems.

The construction of the Gates Center allows for more green space on campus. Between the buildings will be an outdoor winter garden, an area for winter-flowering plants. There are also going to be green roofs, which will reduce storm water run off. Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, the landscaping design firm known for developing the landscape design of the Kraus Campo on top of the Posner Center, will also assist in creating the West Campus Quadrangle by using pedestrian pathways, benches, trees, and shrubbery. One of the objectives of the Gates Center is to achieve a silver rating of LEED, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. The New House and Henderson House dormitories as well as the Posner Center have recently achieved this status and hopefully the Gates Center will as well.

Undoubtedly, having Bill Gates' name attached to a Carnegie Mellon building will attract the attention of visitors, prospective students, and parents, so it is good that the Gates Center will illustrate that the University is progressing. However, the exterior of the building does not necessarily need to reflect the change; the name of the building should be sufficient. What some critics believe that the University may be forgetting is that campus architecture affects the overall ambiance of the entire campus.

"So much goes into the way one feels, and a beautiful campus goes so far in creating an environment that is desirable to study in," said Carnegie Mellon alumnus Pankaj Davessar. "But it is more than that, the architecture in many respects creates a feeling that is imprinted on the psyche of those who toil on the campuses… that feeling remains with them for the rest of their lives."

Demolition of the Old Student Center, the Printing and Publication Buildings, the Planetary Robotics building, and the West Campus garages has already begun. The first building to be demolished is the Planetary Robotics Building, which started being taken down on Monday, April 24. Between May 1 and June 1, the Campus Printing and Publications building and Row Garages are to be taken down, and between June 1 and August 1, the Old Student Center will be as well. Due to the removal of these buildings where the Gates Center for Computer Science will be constructed, campus parkers, particularly those in the West Campus lots, will be relocated. Parking Services will notify permit holders with the lowest parking priority to relocate to alternative lots as these dates draw nearer. Parking Services may be reached at 412-268-2052.

The construction of the Gates Center is scheduled to begin in November this year and its completion is scheduled for early 2009, and perhaps the design can still be changed to appeal to more of the public before it is too late.

"We will work to address everyone's concerns," said Scogin. "We're doing our best to listen. We've made a lot of adjustments thus far and will continue to do so. We're always looking for alternatives. We never go down one track."

So long as this promise is kept, people should make their voices heard. Hartkopf said that, "The Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics, as well as committed faculty across campus, stand ready to assist the university in creating a sustainable world class alternative." Students and faculty will need to enjoy the facility for years to come, and in order to make decisions, the Design Review Committee should listen to the input of students and alumni because the construction of the Gates Center will impact the future of the University. Questions and concerns may be directed to Ralph Horgan.

For more information on the Gates Project, the following sites are accessible:
http://www.scs.cmu.edu/GatesInfo.pdf
http://www.cmu.edu/cmnews/extra/060407_gates.html
http://gatescenter.blog.cs.cmu.edu/  

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