“Ministry officials recognize that in Japan the research environment in chemistry, biology, physics, and engineering--unlike other technologies--has been very insular,” reports architect Ken Kornberg, president of Kornberg Associates in Menlo Park, Calif.

“While foreign nationals comprise between 20 and 30 percent of the post-doctoral/ graduate student population in the U.S., they account for less than 10 percent of the total in Japanese universities. This isn’t the kind of mix that’s needed to keep up with the international pace of medical research,” he observes.

The Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) is the answer. Poised to become “an extremely high-powered intellectual area,” the first 700,000 sf of buildings on the 500-acre campus will boast attractions such as expert microscopists and crystallographers, a cyclotron for brain imaging, PET and NMR equipment, a 60,000-sf vivarium, and 30,000 sf of non-human primate space. Most of these services are clustered in a centralized area no more than a 10-minute walk from the lab buildings. (In contrast to the two-minute travel time typical of Kornberg’s other research projects, this standard was set with the notion of serving many campus buildings.)

In addition to its remote location, environmental constraints make the project a once-in-a-lifetime challenge. The site creeps up two ridges separated by sensitive ravines off-limits to construction activity. Tunnels, glass-enclosed elevators, and pedestrian bridges will link the buildings, converging at the core of the campus around elevators, the cafeteria, and outdoor eating plaza. Breath-taking water vistas abound.

“Our job is to make it such an attractive place to do research that there will be no problem recruiting to this far-away setting. The core facilities will spur people to work together while reinforcing the real strengths of the institution,” he concludes.