Yale University Nancy Lee & Perry R. Bass Center for Molecular & Structural Biology
The Bass Center provides a major scientific facility of research laboratories, faculty and administrative offices and teaching space in a bar-like building which forms the northern enclosure of an important academic precinct on Science Hill.
The design concept reflects the departments’ highly interactive working style and need for flexibility. Laboratories and faculty office space each other across a continuous corridor which extends to adjacent buildings across two bridges encouraging collaboration with their occupants.
A small sky-lit atrium with a generous staircase, a 96-seat lecture hall, administration and a meeting room with view of East Rock are placed at the east end of the building, where a dramatic staircase ascends from Whitney Avenue to the main entry at the upper level of the courtyard.
The materials and formal language of the long rhythmic facades and their end pieces of turrets and arched bridges are intended to strengthen the composition of historicist and modern buildings around the quadrangle.