Cauldwell Wingate acted as Construction Manager for this new state-of-the-art research imaging facility for a consortium of nine major biomedical research institutions including: The Rockefeller University, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Mount Sinai, NYU, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Wadsworth Center, Columbia University, Weill Cornell Medical College, and The City University of New York. Located on the campus of City College in Upper Manhattan, the project was designed to provide a state-of-the-art resource for the large community of structural biologists in the region and to encourage collaboration in conducting complex experiments. It also offers an array of extremely costly instruments that, individually, the participating institutions could not afford.
The project involved the addition of a new contiguous facility to the Park Building, which will house a Cryogenic Electron Microscope suite, general laboratories, a computer imaging lab, administrative offices and NMR spectroscopy instruments. Attracting researchers worldwide, the Center houses the largest and most advanced cluster of high-field research magnets (NMRs) in the nation.
A major challenge was to design a structure that adequately shields the very powerful and extremely sensitive instruments from the surrounding environment. The center’s distant location on the City College Campus and the careful placement of the powerful equipment in vacuum-like spaces resolve this difficult issue.
In addition to overseeing construction, Cauldwell Wingate supported the design team of Davis Brody Bond Architects and AKF Engineers with full pre-construction services including budget, schedule, constructability reviews, logistics and phasing.