The site University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), selected for its California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) a narrow, steep lot adjacent to a parking garage on its dense South Campus, involved a number of physical challenges. Likewise, nanotechnology, a multidisciplinary field addressing the control of matter on a molecular level, presented a unique set of programmatic hurdles, including highly specific laboratory requirements. Rafael Viñoly Architects addressed both issues, while keeping the client’s goal of interdisciplinary cooperation and socialization in mind. If RVA had followed the original brief, the end result would have been a multistory tower with small floor plates. Instead, RVA opted for a horizontal configuration, suspended over a garage, to foster student and researcher collaboration and to open up new possibilities for the rest of the campus plan.

The building’s design was developed through several rounds of owner–architect collaboration, during which assessment and discussion of the client’s needs resulted in a more dynamic understanding of the daunting site.
Initially considered an obstacle, the parking garage became a starting point for the design. Building three floors over part of the parking facility maximized the building’s potential and opened new possibilities for laboratories and common areas. The result was a seven-story building partially below grade with a central courtyard intersected by suspended bridges and stairs, and a main entrance facing the other structures on the Court of Sciences.
The open-air entrance lobby and courtyard inspire interdisciplinary collegiality and directly engage the adjacent pedestrian zones. The lobby connects through the zigzag network of bridges to research floors and the garage, facilitating an atmosphere of communication.

The crisscrossed center courtyard enlivens the predominant campus form of courtyard buildings; on the interior, workstations overlooking the central space are personally controlled through low-level ambient and task lighting, and acoustic buffer areas create interior quiet zones.

“This is a building that houses a transformational field of new technologies,” comments Rafael Viñoly. “While respecting the strong character of the campus, the design offers the flexibility and openness that reflects the way in which this work is performed: large undetermined technical spaces with unexpected modes of circulation that encourage random interactivity.”