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Cell-Shaped Architecture Planned for Institute in ChinaBy two MIT scientists |
By Sci/Tech News Staff, -
31st of July 2006, 14:09 GMT
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An innovative cell-shaped building will house a new biomedical research institute in Chengdu, China, thanks to an unusual cross disciplinary collaboration between Shuguang Zhang, a world-renowned bioengineer and scientist at MIT, and his former student, architecture major Sloan Kulper.
Kulper (S.B. 2003) designed the cell-shaped building for the Institute for Nanobiomedical Technology and Membrane Biology in Chengdu, China, the regional capital of Sichuan province in southwestern China. The proposed new facility will contain 170,000 square feet of laboratory, research and meeting spaces; it is slated for construction over the next three years. The building is intended to look like a cell from the outside and to include an assortment of forms inspired by molecular biology inside.
"Nature has produced abundant magnificent, intricate and fine molecular and cellular structures through
billions of years of molecular selection and evolution," said Shuguang Zhang, associate director of the Center for Biomedical Engineering. "These invisible molecular and cellular structures cannot be seen by the naked eye, but can only be observed with the most sophisticated scientific tools, such as X-ray diffraction and nuclear magnetic resonance, or modeled with advanced computers. But if they can be amplified billions of times as in a building, then these molecular structures can be seen, touched and admired. At that large scale, they can also be very educational for people of all ages."
According to Zhang, the pioneering design for the cell-shaped building was inspired by "elegantly folded protein structures and their simple and beautiful structural motifs. The cell-shaped building attempts to combine the architecture and the biology structures," he said.
"When I took Shuguang's course, I was thrilled to learn that structural biologists had developed such an amazing language for describing new and complex forms. Also, structural biology is basically concerned with the sort of geometries that architects and designers often work with, though on a completely different scale. It's a very visual field that communicates more through illustration than through symbol," Kulper said.
The seeds of Kulper's involvement in the Sichuan University project began in conversations he had with Zhang, a known admirer of architecture, during the year in which he took Zhang's course. Zhang encouraged Kulper both to apply principles of scientific research to his work in architecture -- "Explore the unknowns and navigate the uncharted territories," he urged -- and to spend time in Zhang's laboratory learning about bioengineering.
The next year, Zhang contacted Kulper with the news that he was now the founding advisor of a new research institute at Sichuan University.
Kulper said, "Zhang offered me the opportunity to develop concepts for the building, which, as a biological research building, would give us an opportunity to design for a client that would appreciate details that referenced biological concepts. I started work on sketches immediately once he had given me some basic information regarding the functional requirements of the building as well as photos of the site in Chengdu."
On viewing the renderings of the cell-shaped building, Institute Professor Phillip Sharp commented: "The building is very interesting. I have always wondered what it would be like working within the cell."
| Photo credits: Sloan Kulper |
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