COVER STORY SIDEBAR
Weill Hall by the numbers
Weill Hall
15,300 3-by-3-foot white panels cover the outside of the building.
Nearly 70,000 cubic yards of dirt were excavated for the two-acre, 20-foot-deep basement. It took about 5,000 truckloads to move the dirt off the site. Forty percent of the low-grade soil was used to create athletic fields on Game Farm Road.
The five-story building was built with 25,000 cubic yards of concrete.
Without interrupting traffic in June 2007, construction workers pushed out a 90-foot section of a 300-foot tunnel that runs under Tower Road and connects Weill Hall to the Plant Science Building.
There are about 700 doors in Weill Hall.
Due to highly efficient fixtures and a graywater reclamation system, the building saves more than 450,000 gallons of water per year (equal to approximately 100 liters of water for every Cornell undergrad).
The building uses more than 30 percent less energy than a standard building of the same size. This is equivalent to 6,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year.
The construction project diverted more than 1,157 tons of waste from disposal at landfills.
More than 31,000 sedum plants cover the two green roofs on Weill Hall's west side.
The building's surrounding courtyards and open spaces hold 4,350 shrubs, 244 European hornbeam hedges and 88 trees.
Seven soil types, totaling almost 12,000 cubic yards of soil, were used to landscape the building's surrounding spaces.