Labs

Physics Building

Built 1924. This was the site of the world's first atom smasher, built in 1931 by Ernest O. Lawrence, Berkeley's first Nobel laureate. With eight Nobel Prizes in physics held by UC Berkeley faculty and four more awarded to Berkeley alumni, LeConte Hall (designed by John Galen Howard) has been home to an impressive array of Nobel-caliber work.

Building Details

Floors: 8

Accessible entrances: The wheelchair usable entrance is located in the breezeway...

Weill Hall

Built 1988. Part of a major campus drive to improve facilities for biology studies, the six-story Weill Hall houses 46 laboratory suites for advanced biological research.

Building Details

Floors: 7

Accessible entrances: The accessible entrance is located on the north side of the building and it includes an automatic door opener.

Restrooms: No Public restrooms, but all restrooms in the restricted access area have been...

Etcheverry Hall

Built 1964. The first UC-built building on the north side of Hearst Ave., it was named for Bernard Etcheverry, professor of drainage and irrigation and chairman of the department for nearly three decades. It once held a functioning nuclear reactor in its basement and a research wind tunnel, both now dismantled.

Building Details

Floors: 7

Accessible entrances: There are two entrances to the main level (level three) on the east side of the building usable from the...

Soda Hall

Built 1994. Funded by the Y & H Soda Foundation and named in honor of Y. Charles and Helen Soda as a tribute to their commitment to education in the Bay Area. With classrooms, labs, and offices, Soda Hall was designed with its Computer Science residents in mind: its open alcoves encourage informal interactions among students and faculty, and its labs and offices are grouped to foster a team approach to computing innovation. In Soda Hall, "the building is the computer," with advanced networking, wireless capabilities, and access to computer clusters for shared computing power,...

Latimer Hall

Built 1963. Named for Wendell Latimer, dean of the College of Chemistry in the 1940s, the building contains chemistry labs and classrooms. On the plaza southwest of Latimer Hall is a cupola, all that remains of the original chemistry building on campus.

Building Details

Floors: 11

Accessible entrances: The breezeway entrance to the building has usable entrances on both the north and south side of the facility.

Restrooms: There is a set of...

Archaeological Research Facility

Located at 2251 College, the Archaeological Research Facility once housed Zeta Psi, the oldest fraternity west of the Misissippi River.

Building Details

[under construction]

Bauer Wurster Hall

Built 1964. Although home to Berkeley's architecture department, Bauer Wurster is often voted Berkeley's ugliest building for its Brutalist, bare concrete appearance. But some of the "ugliness" is a result of functionality, like the concrete sunshades over windows to minimize energy costs. It was named for William Wurster, dean of the School of Architecture and its successor, the College of Environmental Design (1950-62), and his wife, lecturer Catherine Bauer Wurster.

Building Details

Floors: 11

...

Math Sciences Research Institute (MSRI)

Built 1982. MSRI's funding sources include the National Science Foundation, foundations, corporations, and more than 90 universities and institutions. The Institute is located on the University of California, Berkeley campus, close to Grizzly Peak, on the hills overlooking Berkeley.

Building Details

[under construction]

Space Sciences Laboratory

Built 1959. The Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL) at Berkeley was initiated in 1958 by a committee of the faculty who recognized that the new technology of rockets and satellites opened new realms of investigation and research to the physical, biological, and engineering sciences. The Laboratory is located in a wooded site with a view of the bay which is one of the most beautiful on the Berkeley campus.

Building Details

[under construction]

Sutardja Dai Hall (CITRIS)

Built 2009. This 141,000-square-foot building is the headquarters of CITRIS, the multi-campus interdisciplinary research program that is one of four California Institutes for Science and Innovation. The building houses research labs, faculty offices, a nanofabrication lab, an auditorium, and a cyber café. CITRIS work aims to improve energy efficiency, transportation, environmental monitoring, seismic safety, education, cultural research and health care. The building honors a team of accomplished Berkeley engineering graduates: brothers Sehat and Pantas Sutardja and Weili Dai,...