Life science building could get its start early next year, architects say

By David Brand

Construction of Cornell's Life Science Technology Building on the most westerly precinct of Alumni Field, could begin early next year, and substantial completion of the new four-story building is expected in the summer of 2007. That is the latest word from architects at the building's design firm, Richard Meier and Partners, New York City.

An architectural impression of the planned Life Science Technology Building shows Tower Road in the foreground and a portion of Corson Hall at right. The new building's two-story extension branches from the west-facing side toward the Biotechnology Building. Richard Meier and Partners and dbox

After a two-day working session on campus, architects and consultants met with members of the Cornell administration and researchers from across campus on May 11 in Corson-Mudd halls to present their latest plans and ideas for the dramatic new building that will rise alongside Corson Hall and the Biotechnology Building.

The $140 million project, the most ambitious scientific facility yet planned for the campus, will be rectilinear in aspect, with a two-story extension branching from the building's west-facing side toward the Biotechnology Building. The extension will house a learning center, meeting rooms and a café. In the spaces between the extension and the Biotechnology Building will be forecourts -- public open spaces.

The entire building "will be crisp and modular, reflecting the order and organization of the way it is put together," said architect Renny Logan, describing the building's cladding of flat, white metal panels. "The building will have clear glass windows to reinforce the transparency and lightness of the building -- and so that everyone can see the activities inside," he said. The intent also is to have the building flooded with as much natural light as possible, a hallmark of buildings designed by Richard Meier '56, whose work includes the Getty Center in Los Angeles and the Jubilee Church in Rome. He is the 1984 Pritzker laureate. The award is the highest honor in architecture.

Possibly the most dramatic aspect of the new building being considered by the architects is the building's north-end elevation: a stair tower with a giant glass block wall. "It would be full of light, acting as a lantern on Tower Road," said Logan.

Underground, the new building will be connected to adjacent research buildings by a series of tunnels. One will run under Tower Road to the Plant Science Building; another will connect to the Corson-Mudd/Biotech tunnel, and another will connect to the Biotechnology Building and its loading dock.

Josh Meyer, a laboratory and vivarium consultant with GPR Planners Collaborative, described how materials, from gases to chemicals, will move from the new building's loading dock via a service elevator and along dedicated corridors to the research areas, two-thirds of which will be wet labs, as differentiated from computer rooms. Each of the four laboratory floors also will have corridors that will be free of materials. "There is no reason for people to come into contact with anything that might be an issue," he said.

The central goal of the building is interaction, said Logan. "People will be fairly densely packed into an efficient working area, with corridors leading to what might be called a town piazza-like space in a sky-lit central atrium at the heart of the building. The principal point to make is that this will be a central space where everyone will mix it up."

The building will be the heart of the university's New Life Sciences Initiative, the largest single scientific effort in the university's history. The initiative involves seven colleges, several hundred faculty and up to 60 departments in an interdisciplinary research and education program. It will seek new methodologies for rapid DNA sequence detection, the computational and statistical tools to manage and analyze the data, and use Cornell's biological expertise to link sequence to function in the cell, in the organism and in the environment. The new initiative also will link genomics with such areas as neuroscience, basic ecology and environmental science.