Core Design Team

Firm: LMN Architects
Julie Adams, Associate AIA
Andrew Carr
Michael Day
Melissa Eby
Eun Jun, AIA
John Lim, AIA
Evan McQuillen, Associate AIA
Mark Reddington, FAIA
George Shaw, FAIA
Mary Anne Smith, AIA
Stephen Van Dyck, AIA

Consultants/Collaborators

Structural Engineer: Magnusson Klemencic Associates
Civil Engineer: CPL
Contractor & Construction Manager: Mortenson Construction
Landscape Architect: Olin Partnership
Lighting Design: Horton Lees Brogden Lighting Design
MEP Engineer: Affiliated Engineers, Inc.
Electrical: Stantec
Telecomm: Sazan
Code: Pielow Consulting
Signage: Studio SC
Digital Content Development: Belle & Wissell, Co.
Elevator: Lerch Bates
Door Hardware: Adams Consulting

Project Narrative

The Bill & Melinda Gates Center for Computer Science & Engineering greatly expands the capacity of the University’s School of Computer Science and establishes a new standard for the study of computer science to attract a broad and diverse student population. The building enhances the School’s connections to the campus, community, and thriving local technology sector, and through its spatial and programmatic synergies with the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science, it creates a new hub of interdisciplinary research and learning on the University of Washington main campus.

The building presents a strategic counterpoint to the minimalist, bare aesthetics popularized by the tech industry by offering a warm, welcoming, and comfortable environment for students, researchers, and faculty. The program includes classrooms, an undergraduate commons, capstone workrooms, graduate research spaces, a robotics laboratory, faculty and staff offices, a 240-seat
lecture hall, a rooftop event center and a street-level cafĂ©. The core program elements—research spaces and offices—are arranged around a central atrium and are deliberately intermingled across
the upper three floors to encourage serendipitous interaction.

The large central atrium provides visual and physical connections across the building and acts as the School’s cultural heart. The space fosters interaction between students and researchers,
reinforcing the department’s reputation for innovation and collaboration across disciplines. A roof-level event center features sweeping views of Lake Washington and the Cascade Mountains,
providing a signature experience for a range of conferences, interdepartmental functions, and industry events. Throughout the building, collaboration spaces offer opportunities to extend
collaboration in a variety of settings and scales.

On its exterior, the Gates Center is a two-sided curving form that embraces its central atrium and responds to the topography and flow of campus circulation. The building envelope celebrates old and new, juxtaposing modules of subtlety shimmering terra-cotta panels floating in front of a crisp black metal and glass subsurface. The depth of the composite system is finely tuned and varies across the building, providing solar shading to the rooms beyond and representing the organization of spaces within. In its composition, the ordered, vertical façade geometry of the western end of the building reflects the formal qualities of adjacent buildings within the central campus. As it moves east, the arrangement becomes increasingly fragmented, echoing the varied and haphazard
campus edge.

The site design unites the surrounding engineering buildings through an integrated plaza, enhancing pedestrian connections across Stevens Way, and along the northern edge of the building
as a major campus connection. Like the façade, the site establishes an orderly urban condition to the west and becomes increasingly informal as it migrates eastward. The Bill & Melinda Gates Center strengthens the mission of the Paul G. Allen School by enhancing the inclusivity of the department, attracting a diversity of students to the surging program. The building and its site represent a strategic integration of major campus forces and departmental aspirations, creating a major new campus hub at the University of Washington.