“CENS”-I-TIVE INTERVENTION AT UCLA

SPF:a officially commissioned its first building on the UCLA campus, the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS). The new building sits atop a decommissioned nuclear reactor within a narrow six-story canyon of buildings on campus, and converts a neglected courtyard into an academic hub for technological advances. SPF:a’s Project Manager, Siddhartha Majumdar worked closely with UCLA Project Manager, Tom Lukas on the project. “In many ways, this project was a University campus version of urban infill, where land is at a premium, and you fill every space you’ve got,” described Majumdar. The logistics of inserting the 6,600 square foot, single story, high bay dry lab into a courtyard bound by 6 stories of building on all four sides (with nearly fifty percent of the building area residing in a two story hole of one adjacent structure) called for a rigorous structural system and modular construction. Though the deep courtyard gets little direct light, the building is oriented to maximize views of stepped planters to the east that, through years of neglect, have grown to a veritable jungle. The need to utilize the ceiling as a test bed for deploying their experimental sensors defined one continuous run of workspaces with a gantry-like catwalk above allowing access to a suspended cable grid at two levels: directly overhead, and at the underside of the roof. Large expanses of glass will mitigate view and light issues of the adjacent spaces. The large clear floor area affords flexibility for a program in evolution: developing and changing with each successive experiment.