The university brought grass lawns indoors so students could have a relaxed environment to study and crunch for final exams. The grass is located in the lobbies of two libraries as well as two science buildings on campus, according to the university.

“Being in touch with nature helps people be calmer, and they feel refreshed and productive,” said Eveline Ferretti, Cornell library’s public programs and communications administrator, in a statement.

This is not the first time Cornell has brought the outdoors inside the halls of the university. In the fall they installed the university’s first indoor lawn in the Mann Library.

“The library is the perfect place for it,” Ferretti said in statement. “It’s great to see people willing to lay down in the grass and just relax there. The main goal is really to make people happy.”

As many may remember, Cornell University experienced several suicides in 2010, when students jumped off bridges located around the school groups. Throughout history the university has had 27 people commit suicide between 1990 and 2010. Many were rumored to be from stressful academic situations, but cannot be completely confirmed.

The grass acts as a calming and yet exciting addition to the halls of the university, and by placing it near the library might even attract more students to study.

“Sod furniture is thrilling, since, unlike other horticultural art, which may require a long period of time to come to life, it offers instant gratification,” said Marcia Eames-Sheavly, a senior extension associate at Cornell and director of the Garden-Based Learning program. “Students have responded to the joy of working hard and collaboratively, should to shoulder, to plan and implement them, and then, to enjoy the seating and witness others doing the same.”

Eames-Sheavly also explained, “We know from research that time spent in nature fosters diverse facets of our well-being, from cognitive function to lower stress levels. They are easy to create and do not require elaborate materials.”

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New York City-based Gruzen Samton Architects designed the building by using sustainable design features to highlight Cornell’s commitment to energy conservation.

“The building is designed to use 32.2 percent less water [that is safe for consumption] and 46.6 percent less energy,” said Kyu-Jung Whang, vice president for facility services at Cornell.

Erin Moore, project associate of utilities energy management, said the building demonstrates an ongoing effort by the university to promote sustainable design. Designers used materials that were safe for the environment as well as materials that are intended to help low energy costs for the end user.

The building was made from materials that serve to improve the indoor air quality for its occupants. Its glass façade allows for daylight harvesting — which increases the use of natural light and omits the need for excess artificial lighting in the building.

Whang said that recycling was also a huge priority when it came to the design and construction of the new building. More than 1,050 tons of waste from construction was diverted from disposal in landfills through recycling and reuse.

“We have diverted 75 percent of on-site generated construction waste from landfills, 33 percent of the total building materials content have been manufactured using recycled materials and 23 percent of the materials have been produced within 500 miles of the site,” Whang said in a statement.

The school not only went for LEED Platinum to make a statement for energy efficiency, but also wanted to closely monitor the progress of the building in terms of energy savings. Ted Boscia, assistant director of communications at the Human Ecology College, said in a statement that the building would soon install a feature to help keep track of its energy usage.

“One exciting feature is the real-time system for monitoring the building’s energy use that will soon be connected to an online dashboard accessible to all,” Boscia said in a statement. “It has great potential to be used by building occupants to attempt to lower their energy use and by professors and students in facilities design and management to study the building’s efficiency.”

The new LEED Platinum building may be the first at the school, but hopefully not the last, according to the university.

The Green Building Oversight Committee, which works to achieve the university’s green building standards, has drafted requirements that order all construction projects costing more than $5 million in project costs, to achieve at least LEED Silver certification.

“This is our first LEED Platinum building, but it will not be our last,” said Whang in a statement. “Cornell’s commitment to sustainability extends to every level of leadership at the university. This platinum rating is the culmination of planning and effort by people all across campus who have been committed to this outcome for many years.”

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The suicides and attempted suicides took place on bridges throughout the campus. Two students’ bodies were recovered from a rugged gorge more than 70 feet below the Thurston Avenue Bridge, their deaths just a day apart.

The university has since been working to help students cope with the losses of their peers. Now it has yet another plan to stop the devastation in the first place: erect nets around the bridges.

At first, temporary barriers were put in place around the campus bridges. Currently, university architect Gilbert Delgado is working with Boston-based NADAAA Architects to install netting around the campus’ seven bridges. The stainless steel netting will be placed under six of the bridges, while the seventh net will be built around the railing of a suspension bridge where a junior engineering student committed suicide in 2010.

“There were several suicides at Cornell in 2010 and after that we put up some temporary measures, but right away we knew that we needed to develop a more thoughtful solution,” Delgado said.

Delgado based the designs off bridge-netting installations in Switzerland. Since the Swiss installed bridge netting, no suicides have taken place at those locations, Delgado said.

The last of the nets will be installed by June 2012. All the bridge netting will be stainless steel and the design will allow students to still experience a connection with nature. Currently in place are temporary barricades that rise up about five feet from the railing, Delgado said.

The bridges will include cameras and heat sensors to determine if someone or something is trapped in the net, according to Andrew Magre, associate university architect.

Black fences surround the bridges at Cornell at the moment, but they will be removed once the nets are installed this summer. Students will then have access to the scenery that has been blocked off for two years.

“At the end of the day we came up with a solution that was effective, and at the same time, it had a minimal impact on the visual element of the Cornell bridges,” Delgado said.

Trying to balance the safety of students without taking away the dramatic and natural space the bridges cross was particularly challenging for Delgado, who said the bridges are a historic part of Cornell’s campus.

“The students and alumni really cherish the beauty of the campus and so we went the extra mile to select a very thoughtful architect that could examine the question from many different angles,” said Delgado.

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