The more successful buildings by Rafael Viñoly, FAIA, display distinct athletic gestures—from the smoothly arcing roof of the 1994 Lehman College Physical Education Facility in New York to the exuberant, glass-barrel-vaulted roof of the Kimmel Center for Performing Arts in Philadelphia. With the newly completed Janelia Farm Research Campus outside Leesberg, Virginia, however, Viñoly has exchanged such feats of bravura for a subtler move—that of merging a 947-foot-long, 280-foot deep, curvilinear building with the earth. By deftly inserting a three-tiered, terraced structure into the gentle slope of a hill to serve as a research center for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the Uruguayan-born, New York–based architect has created a dramatically deferential work of architecture. Although the planting needs about five more years before hard edges of the building begin to be softened by the landscape, the concept is already compelling.
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