Van Andel Institute, Grand Rapids, Michigan
From Archiplanet
| Van Andel Institute | |
| Designer | Rafael Vinoly Architects PC, New York, New York, USA |
| Location | Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA |
| Date | |
| Street Address | 333 Bostwick NE, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA |
| Notes |
Contents |
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| Building Details |
With a cascading skylight roof that arcs over each terraced floor plate, the Van Andel Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan, evokes the rapids of the nearby Grand River while housing a cutting-edge cancer research institute. Responding to an irregularly shaped, sloped site in an urban center, Rafael Viñoly Architects PC designed for the private institute, founded in 1997, a flexible, phased-growth facility that would encourage researcher interaction and adapt to fit the changing needs of the research program.
The building’s dramatic profile results from the terraced floors, interacting with double-height interior atria and the steeply sloping topography. The segmented-arc skylights comprise fritted glazing that allows natural light into the research labs housed beneath, providing abundant sunlight that is unusual among buildings of this type. The research space, the largest of the program zones, is also the most flexible: all fixed equipment and furniture is located in an adjacent support zone. The typical fixed lab bench was reinterpreted as a moveable lab table, complete with integrated task lighting, a power/data management system, and vacuum and specialty gas piping. Common public circulation zones encourage chance interactions among researchers, with the intention of sparking new ideas and research. Dark, vibration-sensitive spaces such as the 350-seat auditorium and an animal vivarium are on the lower levels of the building, set into the site’s steep hill.
The roofline emerges from a vertical concrete volume that houses the circulation cores and service functions of the building. When the institute expands in Phase II, this vertical core will become a central spine, with a new wing more than doubling the facility’s size but maintaining design consistency with the original construction: on the opposite side of the concrete core, five more laboratory wings with the same curving roofline will cascade down the other side of the building, down the hill. These wings will expand the laboratory space while adding classrooms, a library, and underground parking.
