The Advanced Science and Research Center and the City College Center for Discovery and Innovation offer a positive presence for the Harlem community, becoming a magnet for nationally and internationally recognized researchers. The 400,000-gsf (37,000-gsm) complex supports high-end research and laboratory space for key and emerging science disciplines, such as photonics, nanotechnology, water and environmental sensing, structural biology and neuroscience. Below grade, the two buildings share a vivarium, a receiving area, building support activities and core facilities, such as Imaging Modalities, behavioral study spaces and cryophysics laboratories.

The ASRC features a 4-story, column-free, sky-lit atrium intended to encourage interaction and cross-collaboration, the result of setting back the façade at the Second and Third Floors, which created a stack of floating roof slivers. A single offset pipe column, architecturally exposed, extends from the First Floor to the Fifth Floor roof, providing support for the roof slivers and roof above. This pipe column also resists lateral wind and seismic loads acting on a 70-ft plan length of the 4-story exterior wall of the atrium.

An auditorium that can seat up to 100 people is also column-free, boasting an open area of approximately 58 ft by 62 ft. This was achieved by terminating four columns at the second floor onto steel transfer girders, which span 62 ft over the auditorium.

To accommodate stringent vibration criteria required for the installation of highly sensitive imaging equipment and electron microscopes, on grade isolation slabs and floating slabs on neoprene bearings at the Ground Floor limit vibrations to 125 to 250 micro-inches/second, well within the target limit of 500 micro-inches/second.

LERA helped the ASRC to achieve LEED Gold certification by using materials that comply with LEED standards, such as recycled steel, concrete with high fly ash content and low-VOC curing and sealing compounds.