The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

The building represents a new prototype—a partnership between real estate development and institutional forces to produce an urban, high-rise, high-hazard facility allowing the maximum code-permitted use of chemicals. Three major design imperatives of this project were to create and openness and transparency that both facilitates and promotes intellectual cross-pollination among scientific disciplines; build in flexibility to accommodate the research practices of today as well as the methods of tomorrow; and create and environment that stimulates great ideas.

The exterior design of the building features a large “glass box” window area that displays the open, multi-functional research laboratories to public view, while fulfilling its urban role of creating good street walls and anchoring an important corner of the city grid. The interior design uses transparency and manipulates circulation to encourage communication between scientists, providing needed safety, lounge, conference, and vertical circulation facilities at key locations along the travel paths. It minimizes spaces that are used only as corridors.

The first floor houses a museum of genomic research, 300-seat auditorium, boardroom, conference room, and other public spaces. It also contains a separate 5,500-sf restaurant space located at the corner of Main Street and Ames Street.

The second floor contains a Program Room (a flat floor 125-person meeting room) and breakout facilities with access to a rooftop garden terrace that connects to the garage.

The remainder of the second floor and floors three through seven contain research laboratories, HPLC rooms, support spaces, and lab offices. Support spaces include tissue culture rooms, controlled temperature rooms, NMR rooms, a BSL-3 lab, and a ballroom-type robotics room.

The seventh floor contains a greater amount of offices and a raised floor computer room, providing for the administrative and information technology staff.

Each floor has its offices organized around a team area to facilitate staff interaction, and the lab spaces reflect a commitment to flexibility. Open lab design, zoned and modular provision of standardized components, ceiling-mounted mechanical services, and moveable bench cabinetry all contribute to functional flexibility and reconfiguration ease.

Project Information

Building Owner:

Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Building Location:

Cambridge, Mass. UNITED STATES

Project Type:

New Construction

Principal Building Function:

Research

Project Timeline

Jan 2004	Planning Start
	Design Start
Feb 2006	Completion
Last known status: Completed

Construction Cost:

$90,000,000

Cost Per Sq. Ft:

$390

About These Cost Figures

Building Information

Project Includes:

Biomedical
Genomics
Laboratory
Research

Total GSF:

234,164

Building Population:

800

Building Services:

Natural gas, vacuum, compressed air, argon, CO2 and N2

Special Equip:

Tissue culture rooms, controlled temperature rooms, NMR rooms, BSL-3 lab, and robotics room.

HVAC Req:

400,000 cfm capacity

Project Team

Architect

Signer Harris Architects

Architect

Maryann Thompson Architects

Architect

William Wilson Associated Architects Inc.

Architect - Design

Elkus Manfredi Architects

Builder

John Moriarty & Associates

Engineer

BR+A/Bard,Rao + Athanas Consulting Engineers Inc.

Supplier - Biosafety Cabinets

NUAIRE Inc.

Supplier - Biosafety Cabinets

The Baker Company

Supplier - Casework

Fisher Hamilton

Supplier - Fume Hoods

Fisher Hamilton

Supplier - Furniture

Teknion

Profile Created 10/08/2008

Last Updated 09/03/2008

About the Reported Cost Figures

The cost figures reported are supplied by the firms that submitted these projects for publication, which in most cases are the designers or builders. Whereas these sources are intimately familiar with their projects, they may not be fully aware of the owners' finally-realized and recorded costs. In some cases, costs are truly and completely accounted for, and in others they represent a near approximation of the final costs. Costs have not been adjusted for year of construction, nor has any attempt been made to make regional cost adjustments.

Further, costs are not comparable on any kind of detailed standard costing model. Hence, it is possible for the cost of one building to include a steam boiler, while the cost of a comparable building might not include the boiler, if steam is being supplied from an already existing campus grid. Or, in another case, a building might include excess boiler capacity to supply steam to another building. Some submittals include fees or unusual site improvements as part of the construction costs, which others do not.

Fig. 1

Exterior

Fig. 2

Lobby

Fig. 3

Lab Interior

Fig. 4

Lab Interior

Fig. 5

Office Sapce

Fig. 6

Auditorium

Fig. 7

Conference Room

Fig. 8

BSL-3 Lab