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
Supplier - Biosafety Cabinets		NUAIRE Inc.
Supplier - Biosafety Cabinets		The Baker Company
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.