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May-June 2007
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Multidisciplinary science. The 137,000-square-foot Laboratory for Integrated Science and Engineering, a.k.a. LISE, on Oxford Street, provides a physical hub bringing together physicists, members of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences communities, and the folk in the Science Center for collaboration in nanoscale and mesoscale science, the study of materials on an atomic scale or slightly larger. Only a third of the building is above ground. The three-level basement houses a dust-free environment for microlithography and nanofabrication, facilities for materials synthesis, and a microscopy suite, all best located away from direct outside light and vibrations. But the nether regions will not be without some hint of day. The aboveground piece of the building sits on three hollow pedestals with glass exteriors, which funnel light below, and two of the sides of the underground portion have windows facing a moat or light corridor. LISE’s architect, Rafael Moneo, has made a major statement with glass. He has clad his impressive building with it—not the sort that glares or sparkles, but glass of an opalescent persuasion that changes color with the sky. One absolutely essential component of a new building filled with would-be collaborators is, of course, a café, and LISE will have one, at ground level, looking out toward a patio and to the Music Building and the Science Center, which abut the site. The newly created quadrangle of which the patio is part will be landscaped in a way that accommodates an outdoor music performance space, science benefiting the arts. It will also accommodate diverse scientists wishing to lunch in the outdoors and swap information. “This will be a major improvement to the backyard of the Science Center,” professor of physics Charles M. Marcus has said.
Just up the street in the North Yard, the Northwest Science Building (see "Construction Gallery") has been given a flexible, open-floor plan by architect Craig Hartman of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. The building is not to be the fiefdom of a specific academic department, but will be deployed for collaborative, cross-disciplinary work. Lab space in the building (with 210,000 square feet above ground and 260,000 square feet below, four stories up, four stories down) will be assigned to groups of faculty who share similar research interests—eventually to about 30 faculty and their research groups of about 120 researchers and 180 staff. For example, molecular and cellular biologists will mix it up with applied physics and engineering in such areas as tissue engineering, biological imaging, drug-delivery systems, or retinal implants, developing engineering solutions to physiological and neurological problems. While primarily a laboratory facility, the building contains offices, classrooms, seminar rooms, storage space for collections, and a new chilled-water plant and electrical substation. The inquiring sidewalk superintendent will know that.  
 
 
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