Department of Biology

Lasry Center for Bioscience - a leader in environmental architecture

Clark's Cathy '83 and Marc '81 Lasry Center for Bioscience is a 50,000 square-foot, state-of-the-art facility that is home for Clark's Biology Department. View a slide show of our state-of-the-art Lasry Biosciences Building.

In fall 2007, the Lasry Center received a LEED Gold Certification from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System. The Lasry Center is the first building in Worcester to receive the LEED Gold certification. The LEED Gold is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high-performance green buildings. LEED promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health:

  • sustainable site development
  • water savings
  • energy efficiency
  • materials selection
  • indoor environmental quality.

Blending science, beauty and community

Designed by Tsoi/Kobus and Associates of Cambridge, Mass., the Lasry Center for Bioscience includes two classrooms, seven teaching labs and 12 research labs, 14 faculty offices, two conference rooms and three lounge spaces. It also includes a sequencing facility, dark room and many lab-support spaces that allow for more shared equipment. But the facility is not your typical science building. Light fills the laboratories and classrooms and floods the dramatic atrium lobby through banks of windows. Accents in warm wood and the greens, blues and yellows on the walls give visitors a welcome feeling as they enter.

Throughout the building, there are sitting areas with soft chairs, tables and whiteboards to give students a place to work and collaborate. The building, including the front lawn, is also wireless, making it easier for students to work in the building.

Art meets Science

Sixteen Clark art students in art professor Elli Crocker's Drawing the Body class created a biology-inspired mural which now hangs in the Lasry Center. The students each designed four 12-by-12-inch tiles that, when placed together, make up one large 8-by-8-foot square. These super-enlarged interior images of the human body depict red blood cells, white blood cells, brain neurons and skeletal muscle fiber.

thumbnail of mural Listen to one of the student artists talk about the experience creating the mural for the Lasry Center for Biosciences