Architects and scientists ready to give function (and form) to the new Walter and Leonore Annenberg Center for Information Science and Technology (left to right): Robert Donnelly, Jennifer Leung, Peter Schröder, Gregers Thomsen, Kurt Franzen, Joshua Ramus, and Pietro Perona.

The California Institute of Technology has selected the partnership of the Office of Metropolitan Architects (OMA) and Gruen Associates to design the new Walter and Leonore Annenberg Center for Information Science and Technology. OMA will lead the project and design the building. Joshua Ramus, OMA partner and head of its New York office, will lead the design team. Gruen Associates, which is based in Los Angeles, will provide executive architecture services.

The design process that OMA pioneers involves an extended period of collaborating in a team context with the client to identify, respond to, and solve the problems that necessitate a new structure. The output of this process is the actual building design.

Joshua Ramus, Jennifer Leung, Gregers Thomsen, and Robert Donnelly from OMA, and Kurt Franzen from Gruen Associates (pictured above with Professors Peter Schröder and Pietro Perona), were on campus in early May to begin the collaborative process with IST faculty and staff.

Professor Peter Schröder is leading the IST Building Committee and is particularly excited by the potential of this collaboration. "OMA's approach to the design of a building is as exacting and thorough as our approach to science and engineering. We have a real meeting of the minds."

OMA, led by Pritzker Prize-winning architect, Rem Koolhaas, has designed a number of critically acclaimed buildings. Ramus, the principal in charge, and Koolhaas recently worked together on the Seattle Public Library and the Dallas Performing Arts Center's Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre. Ramus has led the development of most of OMA's U.S. projects. He was project director for the design of the Guggenheim Las Vegas and its sister project, the Guggenheim-Hermitage Museum, both of which opened in 2001.

Gruen Associates also has numerous well-known buildings to its credit, including such Los Angeles-area projects as the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Los Angeles Convention Center renovation, and the Pacific Design Center.