The Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Building for Biomedical Research

These features are apparent on the white glass wall next to the adjacent Octav Bundorf Botnar Auditorium and on the transparent glass wall containing the front entrance. Behind this wall the body of the building itself recedes to create a tall entrance lobby with white rolldown shades that cover two floors each and four balconies running along the upper floors. Additional elements characteristic of this style are the entrance canopy made of etched glass and the white frame of the transparent façade. This frame, built of round columns and beams disconnected from the glass, is meant to resemble, in its whiteness and the roundness of its outline, the skeleton of a prehistoric creature. This light façade of transparent glass forms one of the sides of the stairwell and is in sharp contrast to the stairwell’s other side, made of slabs of exposed concrete cast in industrial beds, similar to the adjacent Botnar Auditorium. The transparency makes it possible to see the people on the staircase as if they were behind a thin screen. A two-tier bridge connects the upper floors with the next-door building, allowing scientists to move conveniently between the two.

 

The staircase itself is one of the central elements of the design, not only from the point of view of its function and frontal location but also in terms of it being a vertical component that breaks up the elongated outline of the rest of the building. In its lower part, the building’s contour doesn’t reach the floor but follows the layout of the staircase, which, in turn, appears to be hovering above ground. An artistic wall relief by Rina Haikin in the entrance lobby depicts the chromosomes of the human genome.

 

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