Eighty-two truckloads of timber have been used in Amy Gutmann Hall— Philadelphia’s newest and tallest mass timber building – with the building to become a hub for the University of Pennsylvania’s (Penn) world-leading AI and data research.
The six-storey, 116,000-square-foot building, set to open in January, was officially dedicated on Friday. Several past and present administrators, including Interim Penn President Larry Jameson, former Penn President Amy Gutmann, and Engineering Dean Vijay Kumar, attended the ribbon-cutting.
“Today is a day of celebration,” Kumar said. “It’s the start of a new chapter in Penn’s leadership in AI and data science.”
Designed by Texas-based Lake Flato Architects and KSS Architects, the project first broke ground in October 2021. A hybrid cross-laminated timber system helps reduce the structure’s overall carbon footprint by more than 52% relative to concrete and 41% relative to steel – as per KSS Architects’ original design statement.
“The building is not so much built as it is engineered and then prefabricated with extraordinary precision,” according to Liz Magill, who controversially resigned as Penn president last year. Magill said the use of mass timber heavily relied on advanced computation and data, “precisely the kind of work that this building will foster when completed,” she said.
The use of timber reduces a building’s embodied carbon by an estimated 55-70% and cuts down construction time by 40%
Penn Dean of Engineering Vijay Kumar celebrating the six-storey mass timber building which will open in January 2025.
Kumar added that the new building will also house scientific discovery, computer vision, natural language processing, cybersecurity, medical diagnostics, drug discovery, and intelligence systems.
“I think you all know there are essentially limitless applications of data science and artificial intelligence, and what we want is near universal access to these tools,” Jameson said. “Where access and application come together, there’s synergy and power. This is where the world needs Penn.”
The building is dedicated to Gutmann for her “indelible impact on the Penn community” and trailblazing career in higher education and politics. Kumar called Gutmann’s 18-year tenure as Penn president — the longest ever — “an era of unprecedented growth and achievement across the university.”
“This building’s purpose is forward-looking, and it’s forward-looking in a collaborative sense, in bringing people who have different expertise, different visions of the future together to make a positive difference for the good of our society,” Gutmann said to attendees. “I’m humbled that this building bears my name, or at least the name of a person who has the same name as I do.”
Kumar said the event was attended by a crowd for whom the building was “a labour of love,” including Board of Trustees Chair Ramanan Raghavendran, 1980 College graduate and trustee and naming donor Harlan Stone, and Penn Engineering Board of Advisors chair Rob Stavis.
Gutmann, Jameson, Stone, Raghavendran, Kumar, and Stavis concluded the ceremony by cutting a ceremonial red ribbon. While wrapping up his remarks, Stone noted that the potential of tools like data science, machine learning, large language models and AI were “unimaginable only a short time ago.”
“Now we have a place, here at the intersection of 34th and Chestnut, where we can apply these tools to the pressing needs of our time,” he said. “I can say with some certainty that I believe Ben Franklin would be very proud.”
- Click here to discover why mass timber construction could grow 25-fold across the United States over the next 50 years.
