uRED Architecture

This was the competition project entry for a manufacturing facility for NEB Laboratories, a Massachusetts based leader in the production of biotech compounds for molecular biology research and manufacturing. The site is an estate with a landmark traditional mansion and carriage house situated in a bucolic extensively landscaped park.

The program calls for laboratory/production facilities for 400 people, with the corporate headquarters located in the existing mansion. Also included in the program requirements was a 400-car garage.

The proposed building is composed of a linear composition of building pavilions connecting the main existing building with the carriage house. The wings are composed of a jagged array of lab/manufacturing modules following the geometry of pixilated lines following the terrain contours. The typical disposition of spaces is with ramped galleries at the rear edges of the wings, with production facilities laterally arrayed in front. The research tower repeats the structural geometry of staggered planes. The height limitation of the project requirement is exceeded.

The strategy for the project lies in the fact that, unlike the suggested disposition of manufacturing facility, it is to be subordinated to the existing historical architecture and submerged underground in order to preserve the status quo of the romantic setting. The cutting edge technology and science that is practiced by the firm is therefore sequestered out of sight in order that the architecture of the exclusive residential living quarters mimics the working conditions.

The new building becomes the spatial instrument that integrates architecture and landscape. The obvious graphic affinity between the structure of DNA and graphic structure of a pixilated representation of line is what generates the wings' form. The rigidity of the Cartesian foundation of the graphic grid underlining the computer screen is softened by the free three-dimensional topology of vertical and horizontal wings.