Harvard Medical School (HMS) has completed the New Research Building (NRB) at its Cambridge, Mass., campus. Designed by ARC/Architectural Resources Cambridge, the 525,000-sf building is the largest expansion of the medical campus in nearly a century. The NRB houses approximately 800 researchers and staff from various disciplines that will work to pursue treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other diseases. Completed on a fast-track schedule, the L-shaped building wraps around the existing ten-story Harvard Institutes of Medicine; the buildings are joined at each floor. The labs, designed as a core and shell and then fit out, are clustered to have hospital-based HMS faculty and HMS Quad scientists work in adjacent labs, allowing researcher collaboration.
Shared spaces, such as common and group discussion areas, conference, meeting rooms and lounges, have been created throughout the building to support and encourage interaction. Two story sky-lobbies housing lunchrooms, conference and lounge areas are located within the lab floors. The lower three floors will have a conference center including a 500-person auditorium. The building features a low four-story structure and a higher ten story research tower. A 196,000-sf below-grade parking garage houses 559 assigned parking spaces.
