NCAR’s Mesa Laboratory, a Boulder landmark designed by I.M. Pei, won the 1997 AIA Colorado 25-Year Award. AIA Colorado, a chapter of The American Institute of Architects, created the award in 1994 "to recognize a Colorado project completed 25-35 years ago

that has withstood the test of time and still functions in its original capacity." NCAR's

primary sponsor, the National Science Foundation, provided construction funds for the Mesa Lab, which was completed in 1966.

The lab's poured-concrete towers, tinted by native red sandstone to blend with their dramatic mountain backdrop, rise above southwest Boulder from their mesa top site. Architect Pei, who went on to design the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Pyramid at the Louvre Museum in Paris, among other projects, was inspired by the Anasazi cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde. "Their buildings are always comfortable with the land itself," says Pei, who echoed the Anasazi's elemental, geometric forms in the NCAR design.

Note: There is no public transportation up the Table Mesa to the NCAR Mesa Lab. The options to get there are by car or taxi ($8-$12 one-way from most spots in Boulder).

There is ample free parking at the Mesa lab site. See Logistics for further information.

Directions to NCAR’s Mesa Lab can be found here:

http://www.ucar.edu/org/bouldermap.shtml

NCAR Mesa Lab

Location: The workshop’s venue is the main auditorium (Room ML-132, on the first floor overlooking the main lobby) of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Mesa Lab building. The NCAR Mesa Lab, located at the west end of Table Mesa Drive in Boulder, Colorado, is a working research laboratory set in a nature preserve and situated in the foothills overlooking the city of Boulder.