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Hanover, New Hampshire, USA

Architects: Leers Weinzapfel Associates
Design Principal: Josiah Stevenson
Project Architect/Manager: Kevin Bell
Design Team: Ashley Rao, Juliet Chun, Langer Hsu, Bobby Main, Taehoon Lee, Jennifer Hardy, and Zoyi Lin
Sustainable Design: Atelier Ten 
Structural Engineer: LeMessurier Consultants
Landscape Architects: Richard Burck Associates, Inc
Client: Dartmouth College
Photographers: Benjamin Benschneider

This project reuses and adds to a vacant library in the heart of the medical school quad, transforming it into a vibrant administrative and social center for the School of Graduate Studies and for the north campus as a whole.

Located at the heart of 1960s era buildings on the school’s siloed north campus, the 32,995sf Anonymous Hall project — as well as new entrances for its surrounding buildings, a wide pedestrian bridge, and new circulation between buildings — transforms an overlooked corner of campus into a well-scaled, inviting north quad as well as an accessible, seamless link to the historic green and main campus shared with undergraduate sciences. 

Anonymous Hall has a light-filled Center with spaces for focus, collaboration, and social interaction. The south addition houses the building’s lobby and a café, with an adjacent terrace overlooking a new lawn. Tied together by a spiral object stair visible from the south lawn, the building’s upper floors contain faculty offices, classrooms, and places for student gatherings. 

The graduate student lounge in an opened lower level connects to a protected courtyard below a pedestrian bridge.  As a reused structure in a cold climate, the choices of high R-value terra cotta clad walls, photovoltaic canopy, triple-glazed windows, and high-performance south-facing glass with an expanded metal interlayer to limit summer sun create a building with a low embodied energy that approaches net-zero energy use. 

By reusing much of the existing structure, the building reduces embodied carbon in its structure and operational carbon with a 67kw photovoltaic canopy on the uppermost level under a planted terrace overlook.

The reuse of 20,000 cubic feet of concrete alone meant a reduction of 1,237 metric tons of CO2. As part of the site-work necessary to reorient the building toward the south, the project incorporated a stormwater capture system with a catchment area beyond the site to address problematic run-off and maximize benefit to the watershed. 

The building uses water-efficient fixtures, native drought-tolerant planting, and omits irrigation to reduce water use. Based on campus newspaper articles, alumni, and departmental responses, the new building is positively received as a gateway and new image to the north campus, and a symbol of sustainability for the college.