Bell Labs Holmdel Complex
The Bell Labs Holmdel Complex is a development in Holmdel Township, Monmouth County, New Jersey, United States. It functioned as a research and development facility for the Bell System and later Bell Labs between 1962 and 2007. The centerpiece of the campus, a modernist structure designed by Eero Saarinen, was dubbed "the biggest mirror ever" for its mirrored exterior. Roche-Dinkeloo, the successor firm to Saarinen's architectural practice, designed two expansions to the original structure.
The complex, landscaped by Sasaki Associates, includes a series of plantings and one-way roads. A pair of elliptical roads surrounds the core of the complex, which is divided into parking lots and lakes surrounding the main building. The structure itself contains about 2 million square feet, spread across six stories. The building has a rectangular massing, with a concrete pedestal and a facade made of black anodized aluminum and reflective glass. Each elevation of the facade has an entrance. The first story is partially below ground level due to the site's slope. Internally, the original building is divided into four pavilions, connected by passageways on the building's perimeter. The pavilions surround a large cross-shaped atrium running along the building's major axes.
Bell Labs had owned the site since 1929, conducting experiments and technological research there. Saarinen was commissioned in April 1957 to study the site; he was hired in 1959 to design the building, and the first two pavilions were fully operational by September 1962. To accommodate the company's growing needs, two additional pavilions were constructed between May 1964 and September 1966. The building was expanded again in 1982 to its final size. Restructuring of the company's research efforts reduced the use of the Holmdel Complex, and in 2006 the building was put up for sale. The building has undergone renovations into a multi-purpose living and working space dubbed Bell Works. Since 2013 it has been operated by Somerset Development, which redeveloped the building into a mixed-use office for high-tech startup companies.
The complex is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has been the subject of several awards. A number of film, television series, and commercials have been filmed in and around Bell Works, including Severance, The Crowded Room, and Law & Order: Organized Crime.
Site
The Bell Labs Holmdel Complex is located within Holmdel Township, New Jersey, United States. Situated in Monmouth County south of New York City, the site covers about. Prior to the complex's construction, the site was mostly flat. The core portion of the site, covering, was landscaped by Sasaki Associates. The section designed by Sasaki, which is part of the complex's National Register of Historic Places listing, resembles a keyhole as seen from the air. The rest of the site was originally a nature preserve, with trees and fields predating Bell Labs' construction. It was redeveloped in the 2010s with about 225 houses built by Toll Brothers.Circulation and layout
Roads
The complex is accessed primarily by car and has of one-way roads. The use of one-way streets eliminated the need for wide arterial roads and segregated traffic based on their destination. The site is reached by a pair of access roads running between Crawfords Corner Road in the northeast and the complex's main building in the southwest. The access roads flank a median strip shaped like two connected triangles; they taper to apart near the northeastern end of the site, but diverge from each other to both the northeast and southwest.The access roads lead to two concentric elliptical roads running around the main building. The outer ellipse is across, while the inner ellipse is across. The roads' outer perimeter is lined with trees planted by Sasaki, while the inner perimeter has trees and grassy strips, separating them from the parking lots inside the ellipse. The two elliptical driveways provide access to ancillary buildings on the site, such as the loading docks and boiler room. They are connected by one-way slip ramps, dividing the ellipses into median islands.
One of the median islands contains a monument to Karl Guthe Jansky, who developed the world's first radio telescope at that location in 1931. The Jansky monument is a reproduction of the original telescope, variously cited as or long. Since the only extant data from the original telescope was collected on September 10, 1932, the Jansky monument is oriented in the same direction the original telescope faced on that date.
Elliptical area
The area within the inner ellipse is divided into three sections. The central section, between the northwest–southeast access roads, contains the main building. There are two artificial lakes within the center section, one each to the northeast and southwest of the main building. The reflecting pool to the north, a oval, measures and has some parking lots next to it. The pool could store, and it provides cooled water for the building's air-conditioning system and for fire protection. Underneath the main building, the land descends from north to south. The lagoon to the south, dating from 1982, is symmetrical and has trees, an island, and a footbridge. There were originally two additional ponds, one flanking the building on either side. The ponds, which predated the building's construction, were re-landscaped in the 1960s and then infilled when the building was extended in the 1980s.The parabola-shaped northwestern and southeastern sections of the ellipse, flanking the main building, contain parking lots. The parking spaces accommodate about 5,000 vehicles. Within each parking lot, a driveway with grassy median islands, flanked by trees and sidewalks, leads to entrances on the northwest and southeast elevations of the building's facade. When the complex opened in 1962, the site had nearly 8,000 trees and plants.
Water tower
The water tower on the complex is located within the median between the two access roads. Measuring high, the water tower can store up to and was built to allow the building's laboratories to maintain a consistent water pressure. Three wells provide water to the tower.The water tower has three white legs, which support a bowl measuring wide and illuminated from the base. The Asbury Park Press described the design as resembling a transistor; despite the lack of any documented historical evidence, an urban legend claims that the tower's legs represent the pieces of a transistor. Upon its construction in 1961, a writer for the Asbury Park Press said that the water tower gave the complex a vertical accent, similar to the water tower in the General Motors Technical Center, designed by Bell Labs Holmdel's architect Eero Saarinen. The tower was still in usable condition more than 40 years after its construction.
Architecture
The Bell Works building was designed for Bell Labs by Eero Saarinen, with Anthony J. Lumsden as the project architect. Saarinen designed the first part of the building in 1959–1962 under Eero Saarinen and Associates; the original building was Saarinen's only design in New Jersey. Roche-Dinkeloo, a successor firm to Saarinen's practice founded by his former associates Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo designed two annexes in the mid-1960s and the 1980s. The project also involved structural engineers Severud-Elstad-Krueger Associates, mechanical engineers Jaros, Baum & Bolles, and acoustical consultants Bolt, Beranek & Newman; the first two firms were also involved in the mid-1960s expansion.The Bell Works building contains about, spread across six stories. Due to the site's slope, the front elevation of the facade is five stories high, since the first story is partially below ground. The front elevation rises to a height of. The building is centered around a cruciform atrium and measures across, including expansions. The atrium occupies slightly over half the building's interior area; excluding the atrium, Bell Works has of usable space. Because of the weak soil underneath, the structure is underpinned by thousands of deep foundations.
Exterior
The building has a rectangular massing, or general shape. All four elevations are similar in design, with facades made of black anodized aluminum and glass. The windows are interspersed with protruding aluminum mullions of differing thickness, which divide the facade horizontally into tiers and vertically into bays. The anodized aluminum, manufactured by Kaiser Aluminum, was used because it was easy to maintain and was inexpensive.Each glass panel on the facade measures across and tall. Saarinen's original plans called for mirrored glass to be used on all four elevations, but material shortages meant that only part of the rear, or southwestern, elevation could be clad in the material. The mirrored glass panels reflected most sunlight, saving energy, and they also provided privacy and had a distinctive design. The panels consist of two layers of glass separated by a layer of aluminum particles, which reflect sunlight; the outer layer is tinged with purple because it has an embedded layer of chromium. The remainder of the rear wall and the entirety of the other walls originally used tinted glass. The other elevations were refitted with mirrored glass later in the 1960s, when that material became more widely available. The windows cover a total area of.
The building rests on a concrete pedestal, which is shaped like an elongated octagon. All four elevations are recessed from the pedestal, which contains concrete ventilation openings. Three rectangular skylights run above the roof from northwest to southeast and are visible from the ground level. There are also two concrete penthouses between these skylights; two smaller skylights running above the northeast and southeast entrances; and other pieces of mechanical equipment scattered across the roof. As part of a 2010s renovation, the skylights were replaced with photovoltaic glass.