Carnegie Mellon’s Richard King Mellon Hall of Sciences enters new phase of construction

On a sunny June afternoon, the Richard King Mellon Hall of Sciences entered its next phase of construction as the last steel beam was hoisted into place, “topping off” the facility’s structural phase.

“The Richard King Mellon Hall of Sciences is a bold investment in the future of science, and will serve as a hub for discovery, collaboration and learning,” Carnegie Mellon President Farnam Jahanian says of the project. “Made possible through the visionary support of the Richard King Mellon Foundation, it is designed to bring together researchers, creators and scholars across the sciences, technology and the arts, fostering the exchange of ideas and the creative energy that fuel breakthrough discoveries in today’s rapidly changing world.”

With topping off completed, the Hall of Sciences’s “bones” are in place and interior and exterior finishing of the around 340,000-square-foot facility will begin.

When completed in 2027, the Richard King Mellon Hall of Sciences will be a place where science, technology, art and creativity converge at CMU in new and exciting ways. Extending CMU’s campus westward, the facility will house researchers and educators from the Mellon College of Science, School of Computer Science and the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) Pittsburgh, fostering a collaborative atmosphere that enables partnerships across disciplines. It will also create a new iconic gateway to campus, connecting CMU more closely to its Oakland neighbors, and include an expanded location for the ICA Pittsburgh that will elevate its role as a hub of art, culture and exchange.

Launched with a lead gift from the Richard King Mellon Foundation, the Hall of Sciences is designed with flexibility in mind, providing endlessly configurable spaces that can be mobilized quickly to answer emerging problems and respond to new avenues of discovery. It will provide cutting-edge labs, classrooms, galleries, collaboration spaces, tools and resources to the next generation of researchers, scientists, technologists and artists.

“The Richard King Mellon Hall of Sciences will be a magnificent new building on CMU’s campus, but it will be so much more than a building,” Sam Reiman, director of the Richard King Mellon Foundation, said. “The research conducted there, and the interdisciplinary collaborations fostered there, will be a powerful accelerant for scientific breakthroughs, and for Pittsburgh’s national educational and economic leadership. More than a half-century ago, Richard King Mellon and Constance Prosser Mellon invested generously in a fledgling new scientific course of study at CMU called 'computer science' and the ripple effects of that prescient investment still are creating positive benefits in Pittsburgh today. The Trustees of the Richard King Mellon Foundation chose to be lead funders of this new Hall of Sciences because of their conviction that it will have similar positive impacts in Pittsburgh for decades to come.”

Additional foundation support for construction was provided by Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation and the Henry L. HIllman Foundation, as well as many individual donors. Opportunities to support this important CMU project are still available.