Plans for the Class of 1954 Yale Chemistry Research Building (design architect: Bohlin, Cywinski, Jackson) called for a prominent new gate to mark the western entrance to the university’s Science Hill. Bloomer Studio was the obvious choice for this important commission: to design the first major new gate to be added to the Yale campus in decades.

Bloomer Studio’s design, fabricated of welded steel and cast silicon bronze, echoes the strong but slender gothic lines of the building. Filling the building’s arched porte cochiere, the program called for two pedestrian side gates in addition to the fourteen foot wide main gate. At the center is a panel representing the Ising Lattice, a tribute to Nobel-prize winning Yale chemist Lars Onsager, who provided a proof of the Ising model for phase change. In addition to theoretical physics, the gate includes references to organic chemistry (and chirality, or ‘handedness’) and to inorganic chemistry, with friezes of cast bronze tetrahedrons and octahedrons. Over the side gates, cast bronze peptides spell ‘Yale’ and ‘Chem’ in peptide language.

Bloomer Studio’s Chemistry Gate revives Yale’s tradition of richly ornamented metal gates.

Honor Award, AIA Pennsylvania 2008

Certificate of Merit, AIA Pittsburgh 2009