Northwest Building Project

The Northwest Science Building has been designed by Craig Hartman of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill-San Francisco to provide the Harvard University science community with open and flexible laboratory spaces that will encourage interdisciplinary research clusters. To be located in Harvard's north campus, partially on top of the new underground parking facility, the entrance to the Northwest Science Building will face the Museum and will have a very visual presence on Oxford Street. The 210,000 square foot above-ground portion of the facility (another 260,000 square feet will be below ground) will also face Hammond and Gorham Streets, complemented by a landscape designed by Michael Van Valkenberg Associates.

Architectural and Landscape Design. Harvard has several goals for the architectural and landscape designs of the Northwest Science Building:

• to extend the campus system of open space and buildings north to Hammond Street;
• to preserve and enhance the network of pedestrian pathways through the north campus;
• to create an appropriate transition between Harvard and the residential community, in keeping with the Hammond Street Transition Zoning; and
• to create inviting and safe open spaces for use by both the university and residential communities.

Building Use. While primarily to serve as a laboratory facility, the Northwest Science Building will house a variety of uses including office space, classrooms, seminar rooms, collection space, teaching laboratories, garage entrances, as well as the new chilled water plant and electrical substation.

The laboratory space will not be dedicated to a particular Harvard science department. Instead, the flexible design of the Northwest Science Building is intended to accommodate collaborative research and teaching efforts of researchers from many different disciplines such as neuroscience, bioengineering, astro and particle physics, and biophysics. For example, one particularly exciting cross-disciplinary field brings together molecular and cellular biology with applied physics and engineering, enabling research in such areas as tissue engineering, biological imaging, drug delivery/biological transport systems, retinal implants and other bio-mechanical devices, etc. With faculty working collaboratively with their colleagues in neuroscience, the opportunity for developing engineering solutions to physiological/neurological problems is a very real and exciting possibility.

The Northwest Science Building has the capacity to eventually house up to 30 faculty and their research groups -- approximately 120 researchers and 180 staff. An additional 20 employees will work in various building operations for both the lab building and the chiller plant. While new hires are anticipated over time, many of the people to work in the Northwest Science Building will relocate from other lab facilities on campus.

The chilled water plant, incorporated in the design to serve the Northwest Science Building, is part of a district cooling concept that offers several advantages over the alternative of locating cooling equipment at individual facilities (known as a distributed system ) including: improved noise control measures; higher energy efficiency; increased reliability; space efficiency; and simplified maintenance.

Traffic and Transportation. Harvard volunteered to undertake a comprehensive transportation study to address the possible transportation impacts that future development in the north campus area might have on the adjacent neighborhood, which included the Northwest Science Building. Harvard worked with the Agassiz Working Group, a city appointed committee comprised of Agassiz residents, city staff and Harvard representatives. The study found that traffic impacts due to Harvard development will be insignificant. This is in part due to several factors, including: the low rate of Harvard employees driving to work alone (less than 30%); no new parking created; and the increased efforts Harvard is making with Parking and Transportation Demand Management programs, whose goal is to further reduce the single-occupancy-vehicle rate. Complete copies of the North Campus Transportation Study are located at the Agassiz Neighborhood Council offices.

Building Construction. Following approval by Cambridge Board of Appeal, construction of the Northwest  Science Building began in April 2005 and will continue until February 2008. The construction site will be accessed from Oxford Street; all trucks entering and exiting the site will be prohibited from traveling on Oxford Street to the north of the intersection with Everett Street. Construction hours will comply with City of Cambridge guidelines: 7AM-6PM for Mondays through Fridays and 9AM-6PM on Saturdays.

Harvard plans to implement the same university and neighborhood communications that have been developed for current projects such as the Laboratory for Integrated Science and Engineering. Weekly construction updates, site plans, and contact phone numbers will be posted to on-site information boards, a project page on the FAS construction Web site ( http://construction.fas.harvard.edu/fasprojects/northwest/), and will be e-mailed to those who sign up on-line.

Northwest Building Fact Sheet, Nov. 2004