Home to University of Chicago’s department of astronomy and astrophysics, molecular engineering, and the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, the recently completed William Eckhardt Research Center was a project that required an unusually high level of precision.
Not only were the architects at HOK, structural engineers at Thornton Tomasetti, and contractors at W.E. O’Neil tasked with building a 277,000-square-foot facility that would provide a clean room environment for precision experiments, but the demolition and construction processes could also not interfere with research being carried out in neighboring science buildings.
How did the design and engineering team achieve such a feat? All is explained in this rather informative video:
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