n the 23rd of December, 1993, some 50 engineers, concrete finishers, and other workers gathered at a construction site at 1518 Clifton Road. At the site, the crew prepared to pour the concrete for what was to become the plaza level floor of the Grace Crum Rollins School of Public Health Building. Wooden formwork reinforced with steel beams awaited the 12,000-square-foot slab. But cold, rainy weather was threatening to delay the job and consequently the entire project. Across the street, Fred Kennedy, associate dean for management and planning, knew this was a critical work day. An engineer by training, with a doctorate in business, Dr. Kennedy had participated in all of the major decisions affecting this building, a cting as liaison between Emory and the architectural firm. Throughout the process, he handled problems small and large, from deciding the optimal location for office equipment to having pipes relocated that were too close to ground level. On this particular day, the problem was time. "The crew felt if they didn't get the slab in, they would slip behind schedule," Dr. Kennedy recalls. "It was a small moment of truth." Dr. Kennedy - "sidewalk superintendent" to the workers - left his off ice to check the crew's progress, as he had once or twice daily since construction began. As he looked on, workers warmed the floor bed with hot water. One group began pouring the concrete while another prepared to work the material with finishing tools. Some ten hours later, the workers concluded their task, just in time for Christmas Eve Day.

Precast, twisting concrete columns, developed with the aid of a computer, create an optical illusion of varying thicknesses on the facade of the eight-story building, the tallest on the Emory campus.

n midtown Atlanta, the architectural firm of Lord Aeck & Sargent occupies the third floor of the Colony Square landmark skyscraper. In the large offices that line a busy passageway, natural light streams thr ough picture windows onto computer drawings of architectural projects in progress. Not far from Larry Lord's office, a stack of blueprints of the Grace Crum Rollins Public Health Building sits alongside plans for biochemistry laboratories, which will soon connect the Public Health Building to the adjoining O. Wayne Rollins Research C enter. Lord served as the principal architect for the School of Public Health's new home. With a design team, he began the initial planning for the Rollins Public Health Building in 1990. During the next four years, his company drew upon the expertise of a group that included a project manager; structural, electrical, civil, mechanical, and electrical engineers; landscape, project, and field architects; an interior designer; and others who worked with facility managers and engineers from Emory to complete the project. Their first task - coordinated with the help of Dr. Kennedy - was to sort through the priorities of the many groups who had an interest in the building. "We tried to reach a consensus of all parties," Dr. Kennedy says, "making sure the maximum number o f their ideas were integrated into the design." Students, for example, wanted classrooms kept small and intimate. Faculty in each division had specialized requests to fit the needs for their particular programs. Dean Ray Greenberg desired a space large en ough to contain his rapidly growing faculty and programs in a school that had already surpassed 1998 growth predictions. Emory University needed the building to complement its existing research facilities. Working with a prominent campus location, "our ch allenge was to design a building that was distinct yet complemented the surrounding structures," Lord says. The design team also wanted the finished building to reflect the mission of public health. For example, they brought as much natural light as possible into the interior spaces through high clerestory windows, allowing faculty and students to see a slic e of sky even in inner hallways. The designers took a green approach to their assignment. They chose ceiling tiles without the potentially hazardous ingredient of fiberglass, carpeting that tested safe for the environment, and new, energy-efficient lighting and refrigerant systems. Th eir conscientious efforts to create a healthy building for the school extended even to the construction phase. Smoking, for example, was not allowed on floors where workers had installed carpeting. The final design situated the eight-story building on what the architects call a plinth, or a crystalline base. Gray, white, and pink bands of Georgia stone alternate in the plinth, forming bands that reflect the restoration of the earth. Precast, twis ting concrete columns, developed with the aid of a computer, create an optical illusion of varying thicknesses, changing depending on the vantage from which a viewer sees them. In the atrium, a monumental staircase, accented with a stainless steel guard r ail, again uses precast concrete blocks stacked like Lego blocks and held together with structural post-tension cables. The architects and the School's planners kept costs in mind. "The materials we used are economical, especially from the point of view of the life cycle of the building," says Howard Wertheimer, Lord Aeck & Sargent's project manager for the Public Healt h Building. "They require no painting and are low maintenance and energy efficient." On September 20, 1993, Beers Construction Company broke ground for the building. To insure a smooth construction phase, representatives from Emory University, the School of Public Health, the Lord Aeck & Sargent design team, and the construction crew f rom Beers met with an organizational psychologist to formulate a partnering agreement, wherein they pledged to work together to make the building a reality. Throughout the construction phase of the project, all parties met at monthly sessions, where they addressed concerns, recognized successes, and resolved problems together. "Everyone who has worked on the building respects each other's point of view," D r. Kennedy says. "It has been a team effort."

On the ground floor of the Rollins Public Health Building, Mary DeLong reviews the architectural drawings for the laboratories, which she helped plan. Each work day for two years, Fred Kennedy, associate dean for management and planning, visited the work site for the Rollins Public Health Building to check on its progress. Workers affectionately dubbed him the "sidewalk supervisor" for his diligent efforts.

wo members of that team are Barbara A. Maaskant and I. B. Bates. Maaskant, as director of information services at the School of Public Health, and Bates, as network manager, were responsible along with Schoo l administrators for planning the computing and communications services within the new building. One day in the fall as construction neared completion, Maaskant donned a hard hat and threaded her way through the site. Her destination was a data closet located on the main floor, where installers were running fiber-optic wiring. On each floor, a dat a closet houses all computer wiring for that level, connecting it to the network backbone. At any computer outlet, faculty and students will be able to connect their equipment to one of two copper cables using current communications technology as well as to fiber-optic connections that experts predict will be the way data are carried in the future. The data closets also house pairs of fiber-optic cables that vertically connect each floor to a network operations center on the plaza level. The fiber connect ions continue outside the building, linking researchers and students at the School to computer systems at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Emory campus and extending the network to the American Cancer Society and a remote location in the Dental School building. Maaskant is at home with the equipment in the data closet. She talks of routers and hubs, protocols and transmission rates, stopping frequently to translate her computerese. ATM, Maaskant explains, stands for asynchronous transfer mode, permitting the highest possible data-transfer speeds for video and voice applications to the desktop computer. It permits an unlimited number of users to have dedicated connections, allowing many transmissions to take place at the same time. By contrast, a conventional network offers shared connections, forcing users to compete for time. ATM is such a new technology that the standard had not yet been defined by the time the building was complete. Yet, to position the School for the future, Maaskant and Bates along with planners such as Dr. Kennedy and Dean Greenberg felt "ATM was the w ay to go. We had to think of future applications when we were planning the backbone," Maaskant says. That backbone, now in place, supports possibly the first site in the nation to offer vertical ATM at high speeds in a production environment, according to Maaskant. She continues to talk as she negotiates around a worker pushing a wheelbarrow and another carrying a two-by-four. Making her way to one of two computer labs, she points out a raised floor, with excess computer wiring stored underneath so that the labs can be rearranged to accommodate users. The computer labs, which double as classrooms, also have a power and data connection installed in the ceiling in anticipation of video projection and radiowave technology requirements in the future. As Maaskant leaves the site, rushing off to a meeting with a vendor, she looks back over her shoulder at the building that houses two years of many people's work. "We have a lot to be proud of," she says.

When architects Larry Lord, Elba St. Romain, and Howard Wertheimer put their talents together with those of other designers, engineers, and administrators, they came up with a building design suited particularly for the work of public hea lth.

n Christmas Eve 1994, faculty and staff had barely completed their move to the Rollins Public Health Building. Boxes, yet to be unpacked, lay scattered throughout the eight-story tower. On the top floor of t he new 137,435-square-foot home, Dr. Kennedy declared the project a success. "This building satisfies the needs of our faculty and students. It is a perfect vehicle for doing the kind of work we do." For Dr. Kennedy and others who have been closely involved with the project, the new building "is something greater than the sum of its parts. It is a living, dynamic space." Two front doors mark its entrances: one from the Michael Street parking deck a nd one from Clifton Road. Students and researchers from around the world will enter these doors to learn how to make the world healthier. And just as important, faculty and future alumni will leave this building at 1518 Clifton Road to take their programs and their mission of public health to the world.