Marine biotech center designed to make waves; despite tight budget constraints, the $160 million Columbus Center makes a splash in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.(includes article on analysis of Columbus Center)

Baltimore's Columbus Center -- the house that biotechnology built -- is an inspired amalgam of private research and public-outreach, a bid by the city to attract some of the world's leading scientists while cultivating a few of its own.

According to some estimates, America's biotechnology industry will reap annual revenues of more than $60 billion by the year 2000. With Battimore's economy once again sputtering -- yuppies who reignited it in the late 1970's are apparently flocking back to suburbia -- the $160 million Columbus Center represents an attempt to corner the marine niche of the biotech market.

Prominently sited in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, the 257,000-sq.-ft. facility houses state-of-the-art labs, as well as a number of exhibits designed to demystify science for inner-city youth and pique their interest in related endeavors. The project was spearheaded in the early 1990s by "Columbus Center," a public authority that has since been restructured as an independent not-for-profit corporation.

According to corporation president Stanley Heuisler, Columbus Center officials wanted an architectural concept worthy of the project's site and ambitions, but one that nonetheless conformed to rigid budget constraints. With funding coming from public grants and private donations, the budget could not be stretched to accommodate unanticipated expenses, Heuisler said.

Toronto-based project architect Zeidler Roberts Partnership (ZRP) responded with a structure that incorporates gleaming steel exteriors, a billowy fabric roof, elliptical skylights and, inside, helical staircases.

Designing to budget

Interestingly , the concert almost didn't see the light of day. Having issued a request for qualifications (RFQ) to …