The project: An eight-story, 250,000-sf core-and-shell commercial laboratory and office building at 4101 Market St., Philadelphia, along the northern edge of the University of Pennsylvania campus. The building is the second of a four-building campus being developed by University Place Associates.

Project goal: Provide a high-tech, forward-thinking building for various tenants, most prominently the Philadelphia police department’s forensic labs.

Project scope: To meet the LEED and WELL Platinum goals of the owner, IMEG provided a building performance analysis along with mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineering design services.

Design approach: The IMEG design team met with the manufacturers of the products incorporated into the building and the contractors who installed them to ensure the systems were effectively integrated and simple enough for tenants and maintenance crews to operate on a daily basis.

Design highlights: To achieve the required sustainability goals, IMEG provided innovative system design including:

• Highly efficient water-cooled chillers and condensing boilers
• Air handling units equipped with exhaust energy recovery
• UV sterilization in the supply air stream and exhaust energy recovery
• Active chilled beams for highly controllable environmental comfort
• Pump packages that convert 4-pipe input to a 2-pipe dual temperature loop at the zone level, requiring less piping and using just the right amount of heating or cooling
• Rainwater harvesting that irrigates the third-floor green roof and provides 31 percent of cooling tower make-up water

Project outcome: A highly-efficient building fostering entrepreneurship and providing tenants with access to local amenities in Philadelphia’s “Platinum Corridor.”