“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.