The New England Chapter of the American Institute of Architects has presented one of this year's 11 Merit Awards to the ARC/Architectural Resources Cambridge designed, 730,000 s/f New Research Building (NRB) at Harvard Medical School.
Situated in the Longwood Medical Area, the NRB features clusters of flexible open labs that encourage interaction among researchers, two-story "sky lobbies," dining facilities, an underground parking garage and a conference center. Judges recognized the building's successful integration into its city streetscape, noting the difficulty of "maintaining the scale and character of an existing urban context without submitting to its dull character" which was solved both urbanistically and architecturally. The award jury also commented on the design of the building, saying they were particularly "impressed by the manner in which the stepped and juxtaposed masses created urban spaces appropriate to the locality and enhance the approach to an existing private medical school."
The jury consisted of chairman Patrick Quinn, FAIA, professor of architecture emeritus, of Loudonville, N.Y.; Mark Mistur, AIA, associate professor of architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy N.Y.; and Brett Balzer, AIA, of Balzer Hodge Tuck Architecture in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Announcements for the 2009 AIA New England Design Awards, hosted this year by AIA N.H., were made at the annual AIANE Regional Conference in Portsmouth, N.H. More than 270 entries were submitted.
"We're very pleased to receive this prestigious honor from the AIA," said ARC principal Arthur Cohen, AIA, LEED AP, who led the design team for the New Research Building. "This was - and remains to this date - the largest expansion of the Harvard Medical School campus since its founding in 1906 in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston."