The science hotel at the East River Science Park, being developed by Alexandria Real Estate Equities, is an incubator for start-up companies. It is designed as flexible research space specifically for companies started by faculty members from the nearby medical institutions. The Innovation Center is for companies that are a little bit larger. The third building, the translational medical research laboratories, contains basic chemistry and biology laboratories for drug development, with cafés and meeting rooms at street level. There are plans for a central vivarium and a core instrument facility, and the opportunity to share other pieces of equipment with the surrounding academic institutions.

"There's such an amazing concentration of academic research and clinical care in Manhattan, concentrated on the East Side," says Steven Gifford, managing and planning principal at Hillier Architecture. "Researchers have often wanted a convenient place to further develop their research in a private setting. It’s been very difficult for them to find affordable space to take their research and create a small start-up."

This science park will be both interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary. The multidisciplinary approach brings experts from diverse disciplines to collectively address a complex problem, each from his or her unique perspective. The interdisciplinary approach results from the melding of two or more disciplines to create a new interdisciplinary science.

"We are trying to get these people to move beyond their own individualized research to collaborate and mingle with other people," says Robert DeGenova, laboratory planner at Hillier Architecture. "It works because everyone recognizes that with the wealth of knowledge we have today, no one knows it all. We have finally reached the point where researchers don’t think they can do this type of work on their own. In a clinical setting, you can take advantage of the clinical trials with real-time data, real-time trials. You can create protocols where you can measure what is happening with a patient over time.

"I think this is some of the newest type of facilities that we are seeing," he continues. "There is one next to Johns Hopkins which is under construction, and another bioscience park in San Francisco."

One ancillary benefit of the East River Science Park has been community relations.

"Although very few patients will be coming here, some of our clients are absolutely thrilled with the idea of putting up a new wonderful building that actually attracts the community," says Gifford.

Serving as design architects, Hillier Architecture has arranged the three buildings of the science park around campus space, to create the feeling of a New York street leading out to the river.

"This was a very undeveloped, physically unattractive part of the city," says Gifford. "The community required design principles, and enthusiastically embraced this project. By far, this is the largest biotech development in New York City."

--LW