Large Scale Collaboration Center Visualizing the invisible by bringing research teams together
- Client Confidential
- Location Menlo Park, CA
- Size 24,235 sq ft
- Completion Est. 2027
- Program Research team rooms, conference rooms, visualization theater, collaboration commons, and deck
- Sustainability Targeting LEED Gold, All-Electric
- Delivery Design-Build with Dome Construction
At a national research campus dedicated to advancing particle physics, the powerful tools invented to drive critical physics research are as invisible as the atomic particles themselves, tucked away in a valley out of sight of the scientists’ offices. The new collaboration center aims to visualize the invisible by bringing research teams together on a bluff overlooking the massive particle accelerators and by providing bleeding-edge analysis in a visualization lab to showcase the fine grain datasets streaming every second from ongoing experiments.
Campus and Climate Connection
The building is shaped to complement and connect to the broader campus, creating usable outdoor collaboration spaces sheltered from the wind while architecturally integrating the all-electric mechanical equipment and 75kW solar panel array. Visitors ascend a sky-lit central stair to emerge onto a broad terrace overlooking the SPEAR and SSRL accelerators. The building’s real-time energy usage – with energy performance exceeding ASHRAE 90.1 by 38% – is visually displayed on a graphic timetable.
Excellence in Science Workplace
While artfully arranged around beautiful outdoor spaces, the office and conference spaces that comprise the collaboration center are highly efficient, packing more usable area into a smaller footprint than campus leadership anticipated, controlling costs and reducing risk.
In addition to being efficient, the workplace is highly flexible. The linear office wings have no disruptive structural cross bracing. This allows the open space to be subdivided into multiple possible configurations of team rooms, open offices, and conference spaces. The team rooms themselves are modular, allowing large rooms to be subdivided into smaller ones, each with an adjacent focus room for quiet work.
Collaborative Amenities
The center is a place for visiting groups to connect over innovative research. This mission requires social places outside the office. The “Nucleus” is a collection of light-filled collaboration spaces at the heart of the building, including a grand stair, a library, a meeting garden, a central kitchen, and a dramatic landscaped terrace. On the “Wall of Fame,” built-in shelves, display systems, and AV screens will showcase current scientific work alongside historical artifacts.
The state-of-the-art visualization lab brings scientists together around real-time data with a dramatic portal-like entrance through the central stair.
