Santa Fe Institute to build lecture hall with eye on sustainability
Congratulations to an amazing team for a vision for building sustainably with building science at the center. Thank you to ABQ Journal and Jay Newton-Small for great coverage on this breaking news.
December 5, 2024
By Kevin Opsahl / Journal Staff Writer
For many physicists, everything in life is recycled: We are, after all, just once and future stardust. The Santa Fe Institute will be building on that idea quite literally this year, using recycled newspapers and prefab materials to construct a new lecture hall on its Miller Tesuque campus.
SFI, a highly regarded nonprofit studying science from a multidisciplinary viewpoint, partnered with Santa Fe’s B.PUBLIC Prefab on the Gurley Forum.
B.PUBLIC Prefab produced sustainable components, such as floors, walls and roof, for the forum. These prefabricated materials act as "the thermal envelope for a building" and will use 90% less energy than other buildings like it, said Jonah Stanford, co-founder and chief technical officer of B.PUBLIC Prefab. This novel, and green, approach to building is one of the reasons B.PUBLIC Prefab was chosen to work on the project, Tom Easterson-Bond, the in-house architect for SFI, told the Journal.
SFI approached his organization in the summer of 2022 to work on the 5,000-square-foot Gurley Forum, named after a longtime supporter. Before this, B.PUBLIC Prefab, founded in Santa Fe in 2019, had only built single family homes.
Stanford said it felt like a compliment for SFI to approach his organization to work with them on the forum. "We were definitely honored to be involved in (the project), just because the Santa Fe Institute does include some of the (most) creative, forward-thinking thinkers in the world," he said. "We are definitely in sync in terms of thinking long term around our community and our environment."
Albuquerque-based StoneBridge Construction and Design was tapped as the general contractor on the project. "B.PUBLIC and StoneBridge Construction and Design ... have done an exceptional job helping to bring a complicated narrative project to life," Easterson-Bond said.
Gilbert Almager, owner of StoneBridge Construction and Design, complimented the forum for its "unique look" and sustainable materials.
"I am very excited," he said. "We're getting closer and closer (to completion). It's going well."
Janet Gunn, vice president for administration at SFI, said the institute made a choice early on in the project to find local builders to work with them.
"We felt it would actually make the project come together in a smooth and seamless way, and it did," Gunn said.
The forum, which began construction in August and is expected to be complete in early 2025, will not be open to the public.
SFI, founded in 1984, has long studied cross-disciplinary science on its Cowan Campus in Santa Fe and has more recently been adding programs to its Miller Campus ever since it was gifted to the institute in 2012. The expansion of programming and need for more meeting space on the campus spurred the need for the Gurley Forum, Gunn said.
"You're not going to feel hot and stuffy" inside the forum, Stanford said.