Science & Engineering at UCLA

California Nano-Systems Institute (CNSI), Los Angeles, CA (at UCLA)

Architect: Rafael Vinoly Architects

Mr. Sellars was the Principal in Telecommunications, Audiovisual and Acoustics for this new building at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). CNSI facilities includes about 280,000 square feet of laboratory and office space, split between UCLA and University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB). These facilities include experimental, analytical, manufacturing and computational infrastructure to enable the Institute's pursuit of its scientific and engineering objectives. There are four major research infrastructure facilities, plus special incubator laboratories in which the Institute collaborates with its corporate partners in developing pre-competitive technology. The very innovative design spans an existing parking structure allowing for a large laboratory floor plate above, with vibration sensitive labs in the basement floors. The building's primary design theme is to encourage interactivity between researchers. Extensive telecommunications facilities link the buildings’ local and remote users to the 4000 sq. ft. computational data center, which includes a 12,000 node computing cluster. Redundant fiber optic cabling is routed through multiple underground ducts to reduce the chance of catastrophic failure. Extensive amounts of coordination with Architect and Structural Engineer was necessary to meet the stringent low-vibration specification of the nano-scale wafer manufacturing on the bottom 2 floors of the building. Specialized isolation techniques were required to decouple the multi-story parking garage that is beside and below the building . Extensive audiovisual capabilities were required in the 250 seat Auditorium Lecture Hall, conference rooms and open-plan exhibit space.