Faculty Housing 

One of the unique aspects of the Institute for Advanced Study is its existence as a strongly residential community of scholars, where Faculty and the Members who visit each year live on or very close to campus.  This factor is essential in maintaining the level and intensity of intellectual exchange that occurs across the range of study in the sciences and humanities at the Institute.

In order to sustain this defining characteristic, the Institute plans to build 15 houses on a site of 8 acres of private land owned by the Institute. This site has been chosen because of its proximity to the Institute's main campus, and avoids unfavorable impact to the campus, the Institute Woods, and the Princeton Battlefield State Park. The proposed site of the Faculty housing is not located immediately adjacent to the Princeton Battlefield State Park. There will be a buffer zone of 200 feet between the housing and the Park, as well as a dense hedgerow of trees and vegetation. In addition, the housing itself is designed with a low profile.

For a map of the relevant lands, click here.  For a fact sheet with additional information about the project, click here. 

The Institute continues to be a committed member of the Princeton community on environmental and preservation issues.  In particular, it has contributed greatly to the preservation of the Princeton Battlefield State Park and the property that surrounds it.  In 1997 it relinquished the development rights to 75 percent of its property, permanently conserving 589 acres of Institute Woods and farmlands contiguous to the Princeton Battlefield State Park. The Institute today funds the maintenance of the Institute Woods and farmlands, set aside now for Institute scholars and members of the public alike. In the early 1970s, the Institute made available to the State of New Jersey 32 acres of land between its central campus and the Princeton Battlefield State Park, land that increased the size of the Park by 60 percent.

The Institute is committed to sustaining the Institute Woods and farmlands for generations to come and to preserving the integrity of the Princeton Battlefield State Park, which the Institute, in fact, helped create and continues to honor.

For additional information about the Institute Woods, please see the Winter 2007 issue of The Institute Letter.

The extension to Bloomberg Hall, built at the east end of the existing building, will house The Simons Center for Systems Biology, thereby uniting all the components of the School of Natural Sciences in one building. Systems biology is a rapidly growing and increasingly important field.  Under the leadership of School of Natural Sciences Professor Arnold J. Levine, The Simons Center is focused on research at the interface of molecular biology and the physical sciences.  To move forward the frontiers of understanding of fundamental biological problems, Members and Visitors explore and mine large data sets of genomes of organisms, expression patterns of genes in normal and pathological conditions, the genetic diversity found in species, and clinical and molecular correlations. The Center draws researchers from an array of disciplines, including mathematics, physics, astrophysics, molecular biology, chemistry, and computer science.

The extension, as depicted below, has been designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, and its opening will be celebrated on October 26, 2007.  In 2005, the Center was named The Simons Center for Systems Biology to reflect the generosity of Institute Trustee James H. Simons, a former Member in the School of Mathematics, and his wife Marilyn Hawrys Simons, who have endorsed the Center's work with a $10 million challenge grant from their foundation, The Simons Foundation.

The three-story, 13,750-square-foot extension has been conceived as a distinct but highly compatible addition to the existing building. Particular attention has been paid to maintaining natural circulation patterns to encourage communication within the School as a whole.

The extension has also been designed to accommodate the Center's anticipated future growth. The upper two floors will provide office and meeting space for Faculty, Members and Visitors, and staff. The ground floor will house the Institute's central computing staff as well as a computer equipment room.

In addition, the design features an extensive green roof, the first to be built in Mercer County. Ninety percent of the extension's 4,300-square-foot roof will be planted with a mixture of three variants of sedum, a low-to-no maintenance plant that tolerates shallow soil and harsh growing environments. The design includes a water retention layer that allows the soil and plants to soak up storm water for prolonged periods of time, mitigating storm water runoff.

For additional information about the Institute's work in systems biology, please see the Fall 2006 issue of The Institute Letter.

Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects