CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Tsoi/Kobus & Associates received a Special Mention award at the American Institute of Architects New England Chapter’s 2009 Design Awards on Saturday, October 3 for its design of the Center for Life Science | Boston, the first speculative, privately-owned, high-rise, multi-tenant laboratory building in the United States. Among 271 entries submitted, 18 received recognition.
In selecting the Center for Life Science | Boston, jurors praised its “sophisticated planar interplay of large volumes and materials” and “the wonderful play of mass and light at night [that] gives some indication of experiential variety within.” The project achieved LEED-Gold certification.
“It’s particularly gratifying to receive this award from our peers in New England,” says Tsoi/Kobus & Associates Senior Principal Rick Kobus, FAIA, FACHA. “Science and technology is a signature industry in our region and a primary focus of our firm, so it was an exciting challenge for us to design a new building type that anticipates the future needs of this sector.”
The Center for Life Science | Boston provides flexible, cutting-edge research space for some of the world’s premier academic and medical institutions, including Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Children’s Hospital Boston, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The 777,600-square-foot building occupies a tightly constrained urban site in the heart of Boston’s Longwood Medical Area and optimizes its unusual site configuration by varying floor size as the building rises. Massing components were conceived as interlocking volumes and were inspired by the progressive, analytical nature of the research process.
The dynamic facade features varying degrees of transparency and offers an interplay of tilting planes, curves, and cantilevered volumes aspiring upward and evoking the optimism and challenge of the research taking place within.
Interior solutions accommodate a full range of tenant needs, including innovative flexibility features such as utility zoning and metering as well as accessible shafts to accommodate and anticipate unknown tenants and changing research needs.
About Tsoi/Kobus & Associates
Tsoi/Kobus & Associates was founded in 1983 and has since grown to become one of the nation’s leading architecture, planning, and interior design firms for science and technology, healthcare, college and university, and commercial real estate projects. The firm’s award-winning designs are rooted in solutions that advance clients’ strategic goals and missions, and that combine cutting-edge technology with compassion and creativity. TK&A has been recognized by Architectural Record magazine as one of the country’s “Best Managed Firms,” by Engineering News-Record as one of the top 500 design firms, and by Architecture magazine as one of the “Top 50 Global Giants.”
For more information about Tsoi/Kobus & Associates, please call 617/475-4000 or visit www.tka-architects.com.
