Carl Icahn Laboratory
Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics
Princeton, N.J.
Rafael Viñoly Architects

Rafael Viñoly creates a building that captures the sweeping nature of its users' scientific quest

By Clifford A. Pearson

© Roman Viñoly

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

As its name suggests, the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of life sciences and genetics. Just a few years old, the institute brings together experimental biologists, computational biologists, physicists, chemists, engineers, and applied mathematicians so they can bounce ideas off one. Like the program it houses, the new Carl Icahn Laboratory by Rafael Viñoly Architects takes an inclusive approach to design, bringing the outdoors in and providing an attractive venue for scientists to come together.
Because research in life sciences is changing so rapidly, the laboratory presented a difficult design challenge.

Part of a master plan by Machado and Silvetti Associates that creates a new quadrangle set around an ellipse-shaped athletic field, the new lab connects underground to the adjacent Lewis Thomas Laboratory, designed by Venturi Scott Brown and Associates (VSBA) with Payette Associates and completed in 1986. Although begun just a little more than a decade after the VSBA building, the Viñoly lab needed to reflect a new world of integrated genomic studies where the whole is more important than any of the individual pieces.

Laboratories for about 15 faculty members (along with their assistants and students) occupy most of the building's 120,000 net square feet. Offices, conference rooms, a small lecture hall, and a café round out the rest of the dedicated space.

The social spaces, the places where the scientists and students bump into each other, are critical to the success of the institute. So the architects designed a great curving atrium between two wings of labs and offices. The two-story-high space faces south to the playing field through a curving wall of mullionless glass panels braced by vertical steel cables.

To protect the glazed facade from the impact of the sun, Viñoly and his team designed an arcade of 40-foot-tall aluminum louvers that stand outside the building and help define a covered walkway linking the lab to two nearby dorms. The 31 louvers, controlled by computers and driven by hydraulic jacks, rotate in conjunction with the movement of the sun to reduce solar heat gain.

The social hub of the building, the atrium encompasses a small, freestanding café, a cylindrical lecture hall, and a Frank Gehry sculpture that houses an informal conference space. Curving stairs around the lecture hall and a flight of straight stairs along one of the two-story lab/office wings lead directly to the atrium, reinforcing its role as the heart of the project.

For the laboratory spaces, Viñoly created a system of demountable elements using commercially available lines of modular lab benches and modular partitions. An 8-foot-high interstitial space above each floor accommodates all of the necessary mechanical, electrical, and venting systems.

See the November 2003 issue of Architectural Record for full story.

Formal name of Project:
Carl Icahn Laboratory
Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics

Location:
Princeton, N.J.

Gross square footage:
138,000 sq. ft.

Total construction cost:
$48.5 million

Owner:
Princeton University

Architect:
Rafael Viñoly Architects, P.C.
50 Vandam St.
New York, NY 10013
Tel. 212-924-5060
Fax 212-924-5858
www.rvapc.com