Genzyme Tour 10/27/15

On Tuesday, the Sophomore Studio class took a trip into Boston and got a tour of The Genzyme Center. This building is certified LEED Platinum, and was amazing to learn about, given that the class is focusing on sustainable office design.
As we toured the building, we got to see how different sustainable strategies are implemented into design and why they are important. We also got to learn about what Genzyme does as a biotech company, which was a very cool plus.

This was what it looked like once we entered the building.... and then you look up, into the massive atrium.. 

 Pretty breathtaking. Because of the size of the atrium (which is 1/5th of the building size) plenty of natural light is available in the building and to every employee office. With all of the natural light though, does come glare and heat, so as you can see in the pictures above, many materials are used to reflect light/prevent glare which in turn does the same for heat. After walking around the lower bit of the building, our guide took us up to almost the top floor. Below is a picture from that floor's balcony, looking down into the atrium.

A little fun fact from our guide- It takes most employees a couple of weeks to adjust walking around on the higher level floors. Our professor stayed toward the back while we were up here so that she didn't get vertigo (which happened last time!)
We continued around on this floor to learn more about LEED design standards and the reasoning behind methods the architect chose to use for their building, and then we went to the top floor and got to look outside from an interior balcony.

Again, extremely beautiful and cool... mildly terrifying. But it was mostly great to learn about how every employee could have a view much like that one, in their offices because of the design of the building. It was a great tour for us to go on because not only did we get to see multiple styles of offices but we also got to learn more about LEED design in depth and see it applied.