Project Details
- Project Name
- MIT.Nano
- Location
- MA
- Architect
- Wilson HGA
- Client/Owner
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Project Types
- Education
- Project Scope
- New Construction
- Size
- 216,000 sq. feet
- Year Completed
- 2018
- Awards
- 2021 AIA COTE Top Ten
- Project Status
- Built
Project Description
FROM THE ARCHITECTS:
Recent discoveries have revolutionized our understanding of materials at the nanoscale (one billionth of a meter). MIT researchers are exploring how nanotechnology can impact urgent challenges in health, energy, computing, and more. MIT.nano combines the Institute’s nanotechnology, materials, and engineering systems under a single roof. The 216,000 GSF facility allows faculty and students to manipulate materials at the atomic scale, create innovative devices, and implement them. MIT.nano consolidates complex research and learning activities from across the institute, organizes them to maximize collaboration, creates new indoor and outdoor social space, and weaves into the fabric of MIT physically and academically.
MIT.nano is one of the largest commitments to research in MIT's history. Just steps from the Infinite Corridor and the Great Dome, at the heart of the MIT campus, MIT.nano supports the activities of 2,000 researchers. The 216,000 GSF facility allows faculty and students to manipulate materials at the atomic scale and create innovative devices. It streamlines delicate experimentation and prototyping by bringing together complex research and learning activities that are currently distributed around campus. A world-class facility, it modernizes MIT’s capacity and deepens the collaboration between disciplines, nurturing game-changing ingenuity and advancing the frontiers of innovation without boundaries.
RESEARCH AND TEACHING
MIT.nano houses a cluster of world-class laboratories, including class 100 and 1,000 cleanrooms, imaging suites, nano-maker space, and chemistry teaching laboratories. The research space enables and enhances the work of dozens of academic groups from various disciplines. The core imaging facility contains some of the most precise microscopes that require very low vibration, acoustic and electromagnetic interference. The chemistry teaching cluster is a unique program for undergraduates, developed to provide a strong educational foundation in experimental chemistry to all students.
SITING
MIT.nano strategically integrates into the renowned Infinite Corridor, a central spine that physically and symbolically connects the campus’s main buildings, departments, classrooms, and labs as a center of international research.
A courtyard path on the south side of the building, called ‘Improbability Walk’, honors the late MIT Professor Emerita Mildred “Millie” Dresselhaus, a pioneer in solid-state physics and nanoscale engineering, who once said, “My background is so improbable—that I’d be here from where I started.” A variety of seasonal plantings, seating, and garden lighting provide a tranquil setting as students, researchers and visitors walk between the new, glassy, transparent building and the brick-and-stone Main Group buildings. Improbability Walk serves as an alternate route that parallels the Infinite Corridor experience.
Nestled between the historic Main Group buildings and the 1916 Great Dome, MIT.nano signals the revitalization of an important precinct. While the south side of the Main Group facing the Charles River has iconic spaces like Killian Court, the north side had an industrial, “back-of-house” feel.
Now, the precinct is transformed. A pedestrian-friendly series of lush outdoor spaces link ‘Improbability Walk’ on the south via a breezeway featuring an art installation (called ‘North West Passage’ by Olafur Eliasson) to the new North Corridor while maintaining critical fire truck access to all sides of the building.
VISUAL CONNECTIONS
MIT.nano is more accessible than any comparable clean-room facility in the world. The building invites students and visitors to observe the research directly, through large windows into the cleanroom and the mechanical systems that serve it. Those walking along the Improbability Walk have clear views into the machine, where the art and science of the research is revealed. Sunlight-soaked interior corridors also offer views into labs and outside to the larger campus. Meanwhile, researchers can more easily interact with each other and see the sunshine and plantings outside.
The layered articulation of glass and stone draw inspiration from the etching and deposition processes used to create nanoscale semiconductors. Subtle play between the etched and fritted surfaces of glass both hide and reveal what is behind.
HIGH PERFORMANCE AT THE HEART OF CAMPUS
Nanoscale research involves working with materials at the nano scale. These facilities are ideally placed in a concrete bunker on a remote island, for best performance. But the educational value of placing MIT.nano at the very heart of the research community far outweighed the easy path to performance. The design incorporates numerous strategies to mitigate the site-born noise (vibrations, acoustics, and EMI) to achieve maximum performance, including isolated foundations, stiff steel structure, room-within-room construction, flexible connection for mechanical and electrical services, 20-ton concrete inertia blocks, and active electronic isolation systems.
TAMING COMPLEXITY
A nano facility is one of the most complex building types. It incorporates hundreds of overlapping systems that maintain air cleanliness down to 100 particles per cu ft, regulate temperature to within 0.5 Cº, and control humidity, noise, and vibration. All systems must operate in perfect sync. Putting such complexity on display is, at once, a major architectural/mechanical challenge and a powerful learning opportunity. MIT.nano leverages this opportunity by giving poetic order to the complex systems and placing it all on display—like a Ferrari engine under a glass hood!
MIT.nano puts multidisciplinary learning and research on display. The interior corridors, that provide views of the labs deeper within, are opened to the outside via a transparent exterior veil. The building functions as a high-tech machine, in which all are invited to participate, passively or actively, in cutting-edge discovery, whether in cleanroom labs, casual gathering spaces, immersive 3D visualization room, or simply passing along the Improbability Walk. Strategic gathering spaces along the primary circulation paths encourage informal encounters and life-long learning, suggesting that research is not exclusive but part of a collaborative, on-going process.
BUILDING AND MATERIALS
The building is dedicated to the understanding of materials, manipulating them and creating novel ones, choices for the building materials conceptually reference the science within by expressing the processes used at the atomic structures; layering, etching, deposition and interaction with light. The sedimentary limestone cladding evokes the layering of atoms, the etching and layering within the glass veil mimics the deposition and coating of microelectronic wafers, while mirror chips and metallic aggregate in the terrazzo flooring refracts light and integrates orange tones used to block UV light in sensitive lithography processes.
SUSTAINABLE DESIGN
The collaborative design process engaged the architect, engineers, the client, and the builders in an iterative approach. Early stage energy modeling set overall objectives. Energy models quickly identified that HVAC strategies would be critical to total energy savings. A wide array of energy saving ideas were developed (300+), including standard Lab EEMs (low flow fume hoods, energy recovery) and creative, unique ideas (demand-controlled RAHU airflow).
Mechanical and architectural systems work together to achieve an integrated solution to support the research and sustainability goals. For example, to achieve humidity control and low particle count while maximizing energy performance, the cleanroom enclosure and the exterior envelope are extremely air-tight, and the curtainwall system includes enhanced thermal breaks to avoid condensation.
Overall, MIT.nano saves more than 50% in energy costs over the LEED baseline and 51% reduction in operating carbon footprint. This high-performing building is the most energy efficient facility of its kind, on track to be the first LEED Platinum cleanroom.
Project Credits
Project: MIT.nano, Cambridge, Mass.
Client: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Architect:
M/E/P/FP/Sustainability: BR+A Consulting Engineers
Structural: LeMessurier Consultants
Civil/Materials Management: Kleinfelder
Geotech/Foundations: Haley & Aldrich
Landscape: Pressley Associates
Acoustics & Vibration: Acentech
Code: Jensen Hughes
Cost: Fennessy Consulting Services
Audio-Visual: Cavanaugh Tocci Associates
Interiors: MoharDesign
Lighting: Ripman Lighting Consultants
Cleanroom Planner: Abbie Gregg
Cleanroom Consultant: Cleanroom Construction Associates
Process Engineering: Hallam ICS