Harvard Approves New North Yard Science Building

In a move that fortifies Harvard’s science facilities—and their foothold in the North Yard—the Corporation last Monday approved a long-awaited $100 million facility for interdisciplinary work in physical sciences and engineering.

The new Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) building, called LISE—the Laboratory for Interface Science and Engineering—will connect pre-existing physics labs with engineering facilities, and will span the gap between McKay and Cruft just north of the Science Center.

LISE will help relieve a major space crunch in FAS science facilities, and will address what many say is a pressing need for more state-of-the-art laboratories to keep the University at the forefront of research science.

The lab will also help accomodate the growth of the burgeoning Division of Engineering and Applied Science (DEAS), which has grown quickly in recent years—and, some hope, will eventually grow into a full-fledged engineering school with a faculty nearly double its current size.

The Corporation’s approval of LISE may also speak to broader University plans: high-powered University committees are curently considering relocating either FAS science or a cluster of graduate schools to the University’s recently-acquired land across the river in Allston.

Although the decision is expected within the next few months, top administrators have not revealed their preferences.

But the Corporation’s decision to commit such a large sum of money to science construction in Cambridge has led some professors to speculate that higher powers might intend to keep sciences on this side of the river.

“The building is a good signal that we’re going to stay in Cambridge,” said McKay Professor of Applied Physics Efthimios Kaxiras. “After all, it wouldn’t make sense that they build this costly structure just to have us move now.”

Science administrators and professors say LISE has been in the works for more than a decade, and said this week they are ecstatic that the building is going ahead despite the fact that no donor has been found to pay for the expensive lab.

The lab might garner as much as $10 million in federal grants from agencies such as the National Science Foundation, according to DEAS Dean Venkatesh “Venky” Narayanamurti, but FAS will probably bear the brunt of the building’s cost.

The $100 million commitment comes just a few months after Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby warned the school that FAS could face major shortfalls if belts aren’t tightened.

Earlier this winter, he instituted a “soft” hiring freeze at FAS as a way to conserve funds.

“To assure the financial strength on which academic excellence depends, we must and we will be careful,” Kirby wrote in his annual letter to the Faculty this winter. “Our long-term aspirations will require difficult choices in the near term.”

Science professors said the new building is critical to keeping Harvard on the cutting edge of research.

“We desperately needed new cooperative facilities for material science,” Narayanamurti said.

“Harvard had a great tradition in experimental science but the facilities have decayed,” Narayanamurti added. “To carry on experimental research today...you really need state-of-the-art facilities.”

And Narayanamurti said the failure to construct such a facility would erode the quality of the University’s science faculty.

“Because of the faculty we wanted to hire, it was agreed that science needed a renewal,” he said. He added that he and top University administrators used the promise of LISE to woo top science professors.

While Neil L. Rudenstine was still University President, the project secured prominent architect José Rafael Moneo, Sert professor of architecture at the Graduate School of Design.

In the past few years, the plan’s finalization had been held up due to neighborhood concerns about the building’s height.

The building—planned as a building “on stilts,” with an open courtyard on ground level—was originally designed to rest on supports three stories high.

Due to neighborhood concerns about the height of the building, the stilts were shortened to one level, Narayanamurti said.

And approximately two-thirds of the facility, including the “clean room”—a highly-specialized sterile laboratory which permits examination of the smallest particles—will go underground.

Although the Corporation’s approval means the building has the internal permission it needs, the neighborhood and several Cambridge regulatory boards have yet to sign off on the plan.

In recent years, the process of gaining community and city approval has stalled Harvard building projects by as much as half a dozen years.

Nonetheless, water pipes and other utilities have been routed to the building’s future site, according to Narayanamurti.

And the University plans to break ground for the building this summer, professors say.

“There is a ways to go,” said David A. Zewinski ’76, the associate dean of FAS for physical resources and planning. “It depends on how well the community process goes—there still needs to be discussion with residents.”

In the past few years, both Harvard Law School (HLS) and FAS science have struggled to grow within the University’s limited North Yard territory.

And while this building may be a victory for those who want to keep science in Cambridge, HLS professors say they do not see it as an indication of the University’s long-range plans across the river.

“Everyone has always assumed that FAS science would continue to develop the North Yard area, even if a science option is chosen for Allston,” said one HLS professor, who asked not to be named. “So approval of a building in that area doesn’t seem to suggest anything, one way or the other, about an Allston decision.”

Knowles—who served as Dean of the Faculty during the University’s last capital campaign—said LISE’s construction will keep Harvard a research powerhouse.

“This new building to support research and teaching in the nano-scale world was just a gleam in our eyes at the start of the campaign a decade ago,” he said. “We shall have an elegant and powerfully functional lab that’ll be a magnet for both faculty and students in the physical sciences.”

—Staff writer Stephen M. Marks can be reached at marks@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Lauren A.E. Schuker can be reached at schuker@fas.harvard.edu.