In the Kendall Square neighborhood of Cambridge, Massachusetts, manufacturing centers that were active through World War II have since been replaced by home bases for technology, pharmaceutical, and research firms. That transformation from production hub to the so-called “most innovative square mile on Earth” reached its conclusion in 2024, when Alexandria Real Estate Equities completed a 462,000-square-foot laboratory and office at 325 Binney Street designed by NBBJ. The site was previously occupied by Metropolitan Pipe & Supply Co.—the last holdout of Kendall Square’s industrial past—and the new building serves as a headquarters and research and development center for the biotechnology company Moderna.

Before it could break ground on 325 Binney Street, Alexandria first had to petition the City of Cambridge to densify the parcel, receiving a special permit in March 2020 that allowed 325 Binney Street to rise 90 feet above its namesake east–west boulevard. The municipality also required that the forthcoming building step down to a maximum height of 45 feet on its northern end, where it would face the residences of East Cambridge. NBBJ, which had been iterating massing studies for different rezoning outcomes since 2018, had a split-height model prepared for the occasion.

To refine the massing, project lead designer and NBBJ design partner Jay Siebenmorgen considered Frank Gehry’s Stata Center at the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which looks directly at 325 Binney Street from the south. The two facilities would bookend a short north–south thoroughfare and, Siebenmorgen says, “Our long, thick building needed some point of relief within its floorplate, and it needed to be equal in confidence to the Stata Center.” He and his staff envisioned placing an atrium immediately inside the new building’s entrance, which could establish a bold exterior presence at roughly the midpoint of its six-story south elevation.

Because Alexandria was developing 325 Binney Street as a speculative project, NBBJ’s atrium proposal foretold a bold architectural statement that could be marketed to prospective occupants. Perhaps more importantly, a soaring internal volume promised an energizing work experience for those future users. “We imagined a space where you could circulate vertically through the whole building without taking an elevator,” Siebenmorgen recalls, “And in this conversation we asked ourselves: Could we thread it with resting points where collaborations and serendipitous social moments could occur?”

The client answered yes without equivocation. “There is study after study about how natural light affects us positively, and of course an atrium would bring natural light into the building” explains Scott Brown, vice president of branding and placemaking at Alexandria. He adds: “When NBBJ presented it with spaces where you could work outside of an assigned office, it was really a home run of an idea.”

Determining the atrium’s exact shape launched NBBJ into yet another dialogue, figuring ways by which collaboration areas and lounges could ascend six stories. The design team decided upon a scheme that Siebenmorgen calls “atriums within the atrium,” which expresses the amenity spaces as double-height volumes projecting from the south elevation as tripled-glazed wedges banded in wood-tone metal louvers. The architect notes that the crisscrossing triangular forms represent the two urban grids that intersect at the project site, as well.

A suspended stair hugs and disconnects from the edges of the atrium’s floorplates as it spirals among its smaller counterparts. The circulation system’s rail is made of white oak panels that vary in size and shape to appear faceted. This geometry underscores NBBJ’s desire to integrate exterior and interior imagery, Siebenmorgen explains, because the wavelike surface echoes the south-facing wedges as well as faceted concrete panels that sheathe 325 Binney Street’s mechanical penthouse.

In September 2021, NBBJ’s design achieved one intended impact, when Alexandria announced that it would complete 325 Binney Street on behalf of Moderna. The mRNA covid-19 vaccine trailblazer entered the fray early enough in the design process to leave its own, biophilic imprint on the atrium, requesting integrated containers in which plants could thrive in the abundant daylight. It also asked NBBJ to amplify that illumination by specifying the millwork in a whitewashed finish, for which Siebenmorgen’s team matched oak-slatted walls and ceilings to the exterior louvers as a warm counterpoint.

“I talk about making the most innovative building in the most innovative square mile on Earth,” Alexandria’s Scott Brown says. For the inspiring common space that greets users to the newly opened headquarters, architect and tenant turned that goal into a team effort.