The building includes public outreach and exhibit spaces as well as a 389-seat presentation hall. It is home to a number of institutes including the Global Futures Institute, the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, the Walton Sustainability Solutions Service, the Institute of Human Origins and the university’s Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation. The Walton Center also has research labs for biological sciences, engineering, life sciences and sustainability including space for computing, cyber-security, engineering design and fabrication, and robotics.

The Walton Center for Planetary Health is a building of the desert, not a building in the desert. The Grimshaw team, appointed in 2017, responded to University President Michael Crow’s challenge to create a living room for the university, a place that is a nexus for all the institution’s research, that emphasized the nexus of food, water, and energy on the site and in the new building. The main challenges included the site’s complexity and stringent sustainability goals, particularly in energy conservation.

The building is clad in a shell of glass fiber reinforced concrete panels which absorb and store little heat thus reducing demands on mechanical cooling. The panels are based on biomimicry of the saguaro, an iconic regional cactus species, and its relationship to the sun. The cactuses shield themselves from solar exposure with patterned deep-pleated skin. South-, east- and west-facing windows are heavily shaded by the angled concrete panels, while the north-facing windows are barely covered.

As you walk around the building, some of the panels are much more open than others. On the south facade, the aperatures remain small to cut down as much of the solar gain on the facades as possible. 

The skin has been lifted at each opening to provide a hood, or visor, so that the sun is blocked from one direction, but provides views out in another direction obliquely. This considered variation provides a skin that’s responsive to the solar angle.

There’s a nexus between history, shade, and the building’s height. In winter, solar radiation is embraced for passive solar warming while in summer solar radiation is blocked to keep the courtyard cool similar to the orientation and form of cliff dwellings of southwestern ancestral Puebloans. Lifting the building to protect the historic irrigation canal also engages the canal, not only to irrigate plants, but also to cool the microclimate under the building in order to support comfortable gathering.

Key

1. Glass fiber reinforced concrete (GFRC) self shaded facades – The panels on each facade provide maximum shading of the windows while still allowing for quality interior daylighting and views. The envelope is comprised of glass fiber reinforced concrete (GFRC), which is a lower-density material and thus allows for less ‘banking’ of solar thermal energy.

2. Courtyard expanded aluminum shade canopy, active design egress stairs and panelized facade system – The panelized courtyard facade provides a tight envelope which is shop fabricated to achieve a high level of thermal performance. Exterior egress stairs provide opportunities for exercise, social interaction and potential collaboration between researchers. The option to use the stairs to ascend through the courtyard provides opportunity for staff, researchers, and students to have an active and healthy experience while circulating through the space.

3. ‘Bubbledeck’ void form concrete system – An innovative void-form concrete (not before used in the American Southwest) was utilized in the floor slabs to reduce the volume of concrete and embodied carbon used on the project. The bubble deck (void form) relied on recycled plastic spheres that allowed for less concrete to be used. Additionally, the team used concrete made with 40% fly ash, which replaced the cement – the most carbon-intensive component of concrete.

4. Collected water fills retention basins, re-charges the aquifer and irrigates native landscape plantings – Using expansive native and adapted plantings in combination with a series of stormwater retention, hardscape surfaces are graded to redirect surface water flows into planting areas to allow water to naturally infiltrate to the aquifer. Building runoff and mechanical system condensate are also directed toward stormwater detention basins that naturally infiltrate. All rainwater is held and treated on site. Water from the canal is used to irrigate the landscape plantings in lieu of the municipal potable water supply.

5. Slot canyon – The ‘slot canyon’ exterior entry sequence enables prevailing winds to enter the courtyard and continue along the canal water to provide thermal comfort and
evaporative cooling along the canal.

6. Prefabricated structural steel shade canopy that is part of a continous shade network – University Avenue pedestrian bridge shade canopy provides continuity with the ASU campus shade network through public spaces and circulation zones. Outdoor passive shading strategies implemented on the bridge, within the WCPH courtyard, and across the ASU campus reduce the need for active cooling and misting systems which require additional energy consumption.