The New Research Building at Harvard Medical School has been named one of the recipients of the annual Merit Award for Design Excellence from the New England Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

The individual state chapters within the New England Chapter rotate annually to host the Design Awards Program, and this year the New Hampshire Chapter selected 11 recipients from 271 entries.

“[The award] signifies good design, [and] good sustainable features,” said Carolyn Isaak, the executive director of the New Hampshire Chapter. “The jurors spent a lot of time...to find the projects, and the significance is that they’ve done outstanding work and we’ve honored it.”

Other recipients of this year’s Merit Award include the Integrated Sciences Building at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Pierce Hall at Kenyon College in Ohio, and the Carl J. Shapiro Science Center at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.

The New Research Building, which opened on Sept. 24, 2003, covers 525,000 square feet and cost approximately $260 million to build, according to an article in The Harvard Gazette.

It began as a project between Harvard Medical School and Architectural Resources Cambridge (ARC), a national architectural design firm that specializes in institutional facilities.

Arthur Cohen, the founding principal of ARC, said the ARC “is very pleased to receive this prestigious award from the AIA.”

The building, located close to Boston Latin School in Longwood, accommodates the Medical School’s department of genetics and department of pathology.

“Essentially it was built so that the common areas intersect,” said HMS spokesperson David J. Cameron. “They want people to be overlapping and interacting with each other.”

He added that the New Research Building differs from typical research facilities that house rows of labs along corridors and structurally prohibit the workers from interacting.

Christian Panasuk, the director of sales and marketing at the Joseph B. Martin Conference Center located in the building said that the “beautiful” public space could easily be filled with research posters.

“The conference space open to the public is first rate, it’s awesome,” Panasuk said. “Architecturally, acoustically, and visually, it’s easy for people to concentrate for a very long time.”