State University of New York, Maritime College, Seamanship Center, Bronx, NY

“Size:
15,000 SF

Highlights:
cutting-edge waterfront academic facility”

The SUNY Maritime College Seamanship Center, officially named the William Austen Marine Education & Seamanship Center, is a modern, two-and‑a‑half‑story waterfront academic facility.

The first floor houses a cutting-edge marine environmental science wet lab with aquaria and interactive touch tanks, designed for hands‑on teaching and research. The second floor provides dedicated classrooms and training spaces for seamanship education, supporting both cadets and professional mariners.

SETTY provided Net Zero energy modeling, and BIM/Revit services for the William Austen Marine Education & Seamanship Center at SUNY Maritime College; a modern, all-electric, 5,300 SF academic facility and the first mass timber building in the entire SUNY system.

The building’s innovative design emphasizes sustainability and climate resilience, integrating advanced strategies to support long-term environmental goals. It features all-electric systems with no reliance on fossil fuels, aligning with SUNY’s commitment to a low-carbon future. To address climate risks, the first floor is elevated above FEMA flood levels, with a specialized foundation that both straddles an underground steam tunnel and cantilevers over a historic 200-year-old seawall. Enhancing its role as a teaching and research facility, the project also includes a living science lab with a unique flow-through water system that draws water directly from the East River, circulates it through the building for experiments, and safely returns it—making the facility a model for sustainable design, resilient infrastructure, and hands-on environmental education.

SETTY’s academic facility engineering and all-electric MEP design supports SUNY Maritime College’s mission to deliver a state-of-the-art seamanship and marine science training facility.