What Makes the Esther Barazzone Center so Dynamic?
The Esther Barazzone Center soaks up the sun on a clear fall day. (Andy Peacock)
This story is the second in a series exploring the buildings and systems that make Chatham University’s Eden Hall Campus a leader in sustainability.
When Antonio Pares, a principal at the design firm Mithun, first came to Eden Hall in 2010, the 388-acre farm in Richland Township was largely just a cow pasture. Partnered with Chatham University, he and his team took on the challenge of turning the one-time rural retreat into a state-of-the-art university campus focused on sustainability.
First, the team focused on developing infrastructure, refurbishing the old dairy barn, and building the new field lab. Then came the project’s second phase: the Esther Barazzone Center, or EBC.
The EBC, named for the woman who was president of Chatham University from 1992 to 2016, is in many ways the heart of Eden Hall Campus. It houses classrooms, a commercial kitchen, a green wall bathed in rays from the building’s skylight, and a root cellar for vegetables harvested from the on-site farm.
“It was amazing,” Pares said of designing the EBC during an interview in November. “It was a daunting challenge. I had not really done anything quite as developed as this, and at the time, it was cutting-edge technology.”
That technology included an advanced wastewater treatment system, a geothermal energy loop, solar power, and an all-electric kitchen, all part of Eden Hall’s focus on developing new, sustainable ways of living. But there was also consideration for the past; the gates that lead through the mosaic garden at the front of the EBC are etched with images of local watersheds and geological formations.
“We were trying to give students, in an artful way, the information of how this place began and is,” Pares said. “The result was that the Barazzone Center really brought people together in that way.”
Since the completion of the EBC in 2016, the building has won several awards for its design and, in 2021, was given LEED Platinum certification. The latter is the highest level of recognition given by the U.S. Green Building Council.
A musician sits in front of the Green Wall as the sun pours into the EBC’s skylight. (Phil Pavely)
Walking through the front doors, one has a clear line of sight straight through the building’s ground floor. By maximizing the visibility of the outdoor landscape through large windows, Pares said, the effect gives a sense that the land is moving through the place. “That was important as a concept,” he said, “that this was more of a pavilion than a building.”
In the basement, the team expanded a traditional root cellar that was already on site to hold vegetables and other items grown at the farm. With its dirt floor and connection to Eden Hall’s past as a farm and workers’ retreat, it’s a nod to the old methods of storing food that still work without modern technology.
Designing and constructing the systems that make Eden Hall run presented several challenges for Pares and his team. When the campus began construction, interrelated systems that treated wastewater and shared energy between buildings were less common. “Eden Hall was very much a pioneer in that whole thing,” Pares said. “There were a few systems similar to that, on a smaller scale [...] but not to this extent. It was a great learning experience for us.”
It was a learning experience for the people who came to Eden Hall to work and learn, too, Pares said. One of the biggest challenges came when it was time for students, faculty, staff, and others to start interacting with the cutting-edge building. Cooks had to learn how to work with induction instead of gas in the all-electric kitchen. Facilities employees had to figure out the quirks of the geothermal energy loop. And students had to be more active in the process than they would be on a typical campus when they moved into Orchard Hall.
“It’s kind of like, this is a sailboat, not a powered boat,” said Pares. “You have to trim the sails a little bit.”
But Pares found that students were ready to take part in helping shape the vision of sustainable living that Mithun, Chatham University, and their design partners had developed.
“The thing that was really special for us about Eden Hall was that students really wanted to experiment with their lives and experience a way of living that could point to a future way of living on the planet,” he said. “That was just such a great program brief for us.”
Mick Stinelli is a writer and digital content specialist at Chatham University. His writing has previously appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 90.5 WESA, and WYEP.org.