ORFE department welcomes new building

“Even though [we] moved into the building last week, offices and hallways are cluttered with boxes, and the classrooms, studios, labs and lounges are not finished yet,” ORFE professor Rene Carmona said.

Though classes and seminars could not be scheduled as planned for the building this fall, Carmona said that faculty are looking forward to “the tremendous potential for change offered by the new synergies and interactions which the new building will enable.”

Despite the delay, the University has secured funds from a soon-to-be-disclosed donor, ORFE professor and department chair Robert Vanderbei explained, adding that the donor and the building’s names will be revealed soon.

Located between Mudd Library and Wallace Hall, the 46,000-square-foot structure will house offices for faculty and graduate students, research studios, conference rooms, a large lecture hall and a number of smaller classrooms.

Carmona noted that this construction comes at an opportune time, as there have been unexpected increases in the number of ORFE majors over the past few years.

“A good number of incoming freshmen had heard about ORFE while in high school,” Carmona said, explaining that “some of them chose Princeton because of [the program].”

Erhan Cinlar, ORFE’s founding department chair, said in an e-mail that the “growth in the size of the faculty and research staff” was another reason for the new building.

Cinlar lauded architect Fred Fisher for doing a “superb job” in creating a design that satisfies the need for both “private research space” and interactive commons areas.

“Our research areas are quiet and serene; the atrium in the middle of the building helps the people to ‘run into each other,’ and there is ample space for groups to discuss their research in a relaxed setting with plenty of blackboards,” Cinlar said, adding that there is also a lounge and kitchen for ORFE majors.

Though his new office isn’t as large as his old one in the E-Quad, he has no complaints.

“I truly enjoy the new building … [it] has an open feel to it; the space seems to have expanded, and I have a great view,” he said.

The building complements the modern design of the Friend Center and aims to provide spaces for quiet, independent research, as well as open spaces for more collaborative work.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

Director of Engineering Communications Steven Schultz explained that the building was deliberately positioned next to the Wilson School, economics department and finance program so as to symbolically represent the intersection between technology, policy and finance.

“The location of the building is a physical manifestation of the way social and physical sciences are interacting,” Schultz said, adding that “there is no question that there are problems in the financial world that need to be addressed in thoughtful, cross-disciplinary ways,” Schultz added.

“Since ORFE has strong connections with economics, the Bendheim Center and computer science, the new location is ideal,” Vanderbei said.

CITP director and computer science professor Ed Felten said in an interview with The Daily Princetonian last year that the building would provide CITP with a center for centralized offices, which it previously lacked. “It’ll provide space for a lot of collaboration, and we’ll be able to see each other in the hallways, which is important.”

“We are happy to accommodate ITP in our building,” Cinlar said. “We have not had much in common with them in the past; hopefully their presence will create more interactions.”

Schultz explained that the establishment in 1999 of the ORFE and civil and environment engineering departments as separate entities has led to a need for physical expansion. The two programs shared the same space in a wing of the E-Quad while continuing to grow.

The new building is one of many construction projects aimed at expanding and accommodating increased interest in engineering, Vanderbei explained, adding that as the University decided to expand physical space for engineering students, the most natural extensions occurred in departments that did not have lab components.