The Broad Center for the Biological Sciences is the cornerstone of a $100-million initiative to strengthen Caltech's research efforts in the biological sciences. Expected to be completed in June 2002, the Broad Center will house three major new research facilities: a magnetic resonance imaging center, a biomolecular structures laboratory and a genetic resources laboratory. The research to be conducted in these new facilities promises to equal and even surpass the dramatic discoveries of the last half-century. The Broad Center is critical to Caltech's efforts to go beyond the catalog of the human genome to understand its functional and therapeutic significance.

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The Broad Center is named for Eli Broad, Chairman and CEO of SunAmerica Inc., and a Los Angeles civic leader and philanthropist. Eli and his wife, Edye, provided the leadership gift of $23 million for the Center's construction. Other major donors to Center's construction are Camilla Chandler Frost, the estate of William D. Hacker, Ronald & Maxine Linde, Arthur & Toni Rock, Warren & Katharine Schlinger and thousands of Caltech alumni who participated in the Linde Alumni Challenge.

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James Freed, a senior partner of the firm Pei Cobb Freed & Partners , was selected as the design architect for the Broad Center. Freed is known internationally for his design of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. His firm is also well known for its work on the Museum of Modern Art in Athens, the Miho Museum of Shiga, Japan, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland and the Grand Louvre in Paris. Working in collaboration with James Freed's team, the Smith Group is serving as the executive architecture firm for the project, and Kornberg Associates was selected to assist with the design of the Center's laboratories.

The Broad Center will be located on the northwest side of the Caltech campus, near the Beckman Institute. Measuring 120,000 square feet, the building will include laboratories and offices for approximately a dozen research teams, as well as conference rooms, a seminar room, a lecture hall and a satellite cafe across a courtyard from the main building of the Broad Center. A mall bordered on both sides by red Chinese Pistache trees will line the north side of the Center. The exterior walls of the main building will be a combination of travertine and etched stainless steel surfaces. The travertine for the walls facing the center of the campus will be selected to complement the color of the exterior of the Beckman Institute.