Prophecies
Until recently, most research and teaching wereconducted within discrete disciplines. Academicdepartments were mostly independent.
These days, universities are re-integratingtheir departments. And Harvard is leading the way.President Rudenstine seemed to have Link on thebrain when, during last spring's CommencementAddress, he discussed the University's plans torestructure. "Many of our specific proposals forHarvard's next decade are intendedto...consolidate and coordinate, to integrate, andto lower barriers between units whenever it isproductive and feasible to do so...The newfacilities will be designed to create--quiteliterally--physical as well as programmatic'bridges' between separate units."
High-Fidelity Architecture
The history of The Link reflects the slow,rational, studied pace typical of Universityprojects. Plenty of committees formed.
In the early 1980s, the University begananalyzing sites to determine optimal venues forexpanding research space. Seven years later, thecommittees selected the spot between theMallinckrodt and the Hoffman Laboratories. Then,in the spring of 1989, the University hired anarchitectural firm, Payette Associates, Inc., tobegin the design process. Construction began 17months ago and will wrap up, on schedule, in aboutfour weeks.
"It's not the type of project you can rush,"says Rick Kleber, the superintendent ofconstruction. Indeed, The Link's complicatedplacement and curious specifications madeconstruction a whopper of a challenge. "It's beena very interesting project--very intensemechanically," he says. And stressful. "Anytimeyou work between two fixed points, there's no roomto shift things."
According to Connors, The Link was developedafter a "long, long, long planning stage when theprofessors and designers got together." Becausethey conceived it from scratch, they were able toincorporate idiosyncratic research needs into thebuilding's basic structure. The designers spent agreat deal of time walking through the existinglabs, analyzing programs and interviewing thefuture occupants.
The building fits the scientists like an enzymefits its substrate. For example, an innovativeframe support, called a gantry, stretches over thecourtyard from Anderson's second-floor lab. Whenhis group builds a particularly hefty apparatusand needs to ship it out, they can place it in alarge box, open the wide doors, and lower it usingthe gantry onto a truckbed below. From there, thetruck drives it to the airport for its tripsouth--to Antarctica. A well-placed gantry is agodsend.
The architects also included holes in the wallsfor interconnecting equipment and special roomsfor storing the group's enormous boxes. An open-