Research center celebrates nature and collaboration

by Otesa Middleton Miles
for Virginia Business
October 2006

In some ways, the sprawling research center built by one of the world’s largest philanthropies — the Howard Hughes Medical Institute – is as reclusive as the organization’s famous namesake. The $500 million Janelia Farm Research Center is tucked away from the busy world amid 689 acres of woods and pastoral land in Loudoun County. Even the main building is hard to spot from Route 7.

The Ashburn research facility, which opened in September, was designed to create a collaborative, creative environment for the world’s top scientists. But architect Rafael Vinoly didn’t want an obtrusive, sterile building. Instead he designed the curving, glass-walled, 317,000-square-foot main structure into a rolling hillside. When visitors approach the complex, all that’s visible is its green roof, landscaped with plants that meld into the farm’s setting along the southern banks of the Potomac River.

Dirt removed from the hill was recycled back into the site, sparing the dumping of thousands of truckloads of dirt elsewhere. “It was a balance between excavation and fill,” says HHMI architect Robert McGhee. When contractors ran into a big rock in the hill, it was crushed and used for the roadbed.

While environmental-sustaining techniques have characterized construction, the project itself is the stuff of scientists’ dreams. Inside the main building are offices, laboratories and a conference center, all connected by plenty of gathering spaces to allow for collaboration. With free, hotel-like lodging for conferences, on-site apartments for visiting fellows, plus dining and fitness facilities, the center promises to serve as a self-contained scientific utopia for the study of broad biomedical questions. “We’re trying to solve long-range, blue sky problems that no one really knows how to solve,” says Gerald M. Rubin, the center’s director and an internationally recognized geneticist.

First researchers will explore how the brain’s neuronal circuits process information, starting with worms, flies and mice — an effort that could take years. As investigators delve into new areas, they will need new tools, says Rubin. Therefore, researchers will simultaneously work on developing new imaging tools because, he says, “Some of the technical tools we need don’t exist. We’re trying to build those.”

By the summer of 2007, some 200 researchers are expected to work at Janelia Farm. The number is expected to grow to 400 in the next three or four years.

The campus’ 96-room hotel has rooms on only one side of a curved, glass corridor — designed so that all rooms face the site’s natural setting. There’s even a bit of history. The Georgian-style manor house of the previous owners, Vinton and Robert Pickens, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and still sits on the property.

HHMI purchased the farm in 2000, and construction began in 2003. The farm got its name from the names of the Pickens’ daughters, Jane and Cornelia. Rubin says the name’s a keeper because it doesn’t limit the research or pigeonhole the scientists. “If we call it The Brain Scientists Institute, after 30 years we might work on something else.” Keeping the farm’s moniker leaves the door open to study the next big question, whatever that might be.

Project: Janelia Farm Research Center
Owner/Developer: Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Cost: $500 million
Architect: Rafael Viñoly Architects PC
General contractor: Turner Construction Co.