A20
TRI-CITIES AREA JOURNAL OF BUSINESS | JANUARY 2021
ARCHITECTURE & ENGINEERING
Courtesy Terence L. Thornhill Architect The floor plan of the LIGO Hanford Exploration Center, or LExC.
LExC, From page A19 Thornhill is a confessed science “nerd,” but he is no physicist. He studied black holes and the methods scientists used to detect the gravitational waves emanating from them. “The learning curve was pretty dramatic,” he said. Thornhill sat down with sketch paper and a No. 2 pencil and asked himself, “How can I represent the collision of black holes frozen in time.” He laid out a footprint that captured the collision and waves.
The clients liked what they saw. Thornhill and DGR first won the competition to develop preliminary drawings and later to build, once funding was included in Washington’s capital projects budget. The black hole concept was straightforward, but the science was not. For example, Thornhill reached for a Fibonacci spiral – like a spiral seashell with waves narrowing at the center – to convey movement. But his scientist-clients corrected him: Waves travel in regularly spaced Archimedean spirals. The black hole design brings the wow factor to LExC but the building is packed with other symbols. The central silo topped by a dome that echoes telescope observatories and acknowledges that throughout history, humans studied space by looking at it, not listening to it. LIGO altered the rules. It listened for vibrations. “Up to this point, all the observatories were silent movies. You didn’t hear anything,” he said. “A lot of smart scientists told me about that.” So, while the design reaches the stars, the actual construction is straightforward, thanks to state-imposed rules on the projects it funds. LExC is designed to qualify for the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) silver rating. That means it will be exceptionally efficient from an energy and water use point of view and in the materials used in construction. It also relies on pre-engineered structural elements. The distinctive LEED plaque will hang discretely in a gallery near the entrance. Most building owners proudly display their LEED plaques but LIGO does not want to draw attention away from the Nobel medal. The exterior materials echo the existing buildings at the LIGO campus, down to the blue stripes. Visitors will arrive at an existing auditorium and walk to the exploratory center along a path that passes through two lengths of the pipe that were not needed for construction of the laser tunnels that form the actual observatory. LExC is expected to host 10,000 school children annually, twice the number who were able to visit the campus and its auditorium. The center is designed to promote interest in science, technology, education and math and to answer the public’s growing interest in the work of LIGO, which stands for Laser Interferometer Gravitational Observatory.
uBUSINESS BRIEF Trios adds online scheduling option
Commercial Construction Subcontractor & Supplier
www.kilgoretecproducts.com • (509) 893-0750
Trios Health has launched online scheduling for appointments with primary care providers. Patients can use the schedule site to make appointments with family medicine, internal medicine and pediatric providers. It is available to existing and new patients. Go to trioshealth.org/find-a-doctor.