North Hall, RISD Student Dormitory

About this Property

#Proposal

On a formerly vacant portion of College Hill between Angell and Waterman Streets, the first new student housing in 34 years was constructed. Consisting of a mix of singles and doubles capable of housing 148 students, this modern six-story gray clad building also contains shared lounges, a kitchen area, and a large, flexible work studio.¹ The project kicked off a series of improvements to surrounding first-year dorms at Homer House and Nickerson.

Only a one-story out-building connected to 62 Waterman was razed to make way for this new construction. It is built into College Hill, with its western facade rising six stories while its eastern facade rises five. Across the outdoor quad is Nickerson Hall, which was renovated in 2020. Not far away is the “The Met,” the college’s all-you-can-eat dining hall.

#Design Reception

The 41,000 sf building was designed by Boston-based firm NADAAA led by Nader Tehrani (RISD Bachelor of Architecture 1986), Katherine Faulkner, and Arthur Chang. When Tehrani was working at Office dA, he designed much of the historically-sensitive conversion of the Hospital Trust first floor lobby into the Fleet Library at RISD.

North Hall was designed to stand out in its surroundings but also blend with the nearby List Hall designed by mid-century “star-chitect” Philip Johnson. It was also designed to be environmentally sustainable, expected to consume approximately 27% less energy than a typical building of its size and use 3,200 gallons less water than residential buildings housing similar numbers of people.²

Our local architecture critic was very positive about the design of this new building, saying “The freshman residence hall is the kind of serious, innovative, and environmentally sensitive public work of art that Providence should be encouraging” and going further to say “North Hall demonstrates what a good architect can do with a simple, well-proportioned rectangle on a city lot jammed up on all sides by buildings and busy streets.”³

We largely agree and applaud the designer’s effort to use this building as a showpiece for what sustainability can look like. Many green building that have been constructed in Providence are bland expanses of glass and steel. This building feels organic, even if its angles are crisp and sharp. The brick has a life to it and a texture that humanizes the structure without being stuck in a traditional style.

#In the News

A clean design

by Alex Kuffner
Providence Journal | April 13, 2020 (abridged)

Look up at the ceiling in the common room of the Rhode Island School of Design’s new dormitory and you’ll see what sets it apart from other tall buildings.

Where there would normally be concrete is instead a sweeping expanse of wood: lengths of gleaming blond spruce glued together in layers to form the base of five of the building’s six stories.

It may seem unremarkable, but this is a novel sight. Few buildings in the world as high as this use wood as a structural element. North Hall is the only college residence hall in New England to do so.

That puts the dormitory at the vanguard of a movement to green the global construction industry by replacing carbon-intensive concrete and steel with sustainably harvested wood.

Using more wood not only means cutting down on the greenhouse-gas emissions associated with the production of concrete and steel, but lumber has the added benefit of being able to store carbon absorbed from the atmosphere.

“If you look at the big picture, the notion that a renewable material can come to characterize a lot of our buildings is a no-brainer,” said Nader Tehrani, a RISD alumnus and principal of NADAAA, the Boston-based architecture firm that designed North Hall. […]

Using a method known as Integrated Project Delivery, Tehrani and other architects from his firm collaborated from square one with contractors, engineers and school administrators to design the dorm and figure out what it would be made from.

One of their aims was to be as sustainable as possible. That would mean using wood, but traditional lumber doesn’t have the strength of concrete or steel. However, a wood product called cross-laminated timber that is gaining popularity around the world does. It can be cut into wide decks to replace concrete and, when stood on end, can replace steel framing. […]

The material is most commonly used in Europe, in such tall buildings as an 18-story apartment and hotel complex in Norway, and it is starting to catch on in the United States, where an eight-story tower in Portland, Oregon, has attracted widespread attention. […]

Because the wooden panels were so quick to install, it took only 2½ weeks to build the frame of the structure last year. It would have taken six to eight weeks with concrete and been more difficult, because that phase of construction took place in the winter.

“We didn’t know it would pay off with the speed with which it would be assembled and the ease of using it in the field,” [Jack] Silva said. “It fit together like a giant jigsaw puzzle.” […]

North Hall fits into the school’s environmentally friendly philosophy most clearly in its embrace of wood. Wooden materials aren’t just found in the building’s structure. Much of the furniture, which was designed by RISD faculty, is made of sustainably harvested European beech and bamboo. Offcuts of CLT weren’t wasted. They were used to make countertops in the laundry room and elsewhere.

The 148-student building has two small green roofs and permeable paving at its entrance to manage stormwater runoff. It uses a series of on-demand water heaters to reduce energy waste, has enhanced wall insulation, uses LED lights throughout, and employs a high-efficiency heating and cooling system. Toilets, faucets and showers are low-flow.

There are water-filling stations around the building, a secure storage room where students can keep their bikes and, this being an art school, even a special recycling bin for used spray-paint cans. […]

The dorm has gotten a lot of interest since it opened last fall. It was mentioned in a New York Times piece on the future of wooden buildings and was recently featured in the industry magazine Architectural Record.

It also helped inspire Brown University to build its new health and wellness center using CLT, said Annie Newman, RISD’s director of planning, design and construction.

A wide range of environmentalists, architects and planners argue that the future of building in the age of climate change depends on the use of more wood.

Because of the amount of heat needed to make concrete and steel, their production accounts for as much as 9% of global carbon emissions, according to one recent study led by researchers at the University of California, Davis. Replace those materials with CLT and the associated emissions can be eliminated, while at the same time creating a huge carbon sink in all the new wooden structures that would go up.

That’s not to say that there aren’t questions about using more wood. The logging industry and the manufacture and transportation of lumber all produce emissions. And there are concerns about the true sustainability of timber forests. […]

Tehrani also likes it because it can be easily repurposed. If a building reaches the end of its design life, CLT panels can be removed and reused.

”Do we think of buildings as disposable things, or do we begin to refashion them as things with many lives?” he said.

In his assessment, tall buildings made out of wood will only become more common as construction companies and labor unions get accustomed to using it.

”It requires a little bit of risk to demonstrate that a different system may be better,” Tehrani said.

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Kuffner, Alex. “A clean design.” Providence Journal (RI), sec. RI News, 13 Apr. 2020, p. A6. NewsBank: America’s News, https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info%3Asid/infoweb.newsbank.com&svc_dat=NewsBank&req_dat=D4BD6B42F1AB4706B5E1244D477DEE03&rft_val_format=info%3Aofi/fmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Actx&rft_dat=document_id%3Anews/17A55002235D63F8. Accessed 21 Oct. 2024.