{description}Stanford’s Clark Center is the biggest experiment on campus. Nestled between the sleek structures of the engineering quad and the expansive buildings of the medical center, it is the home of Bio-X, Stanford’s interdisciplinary life sciences program. The building, as far as architecture goes, is a work of art. Apart from Hoover Tower and the original sandstone buildings of the Main Quad, it is arguably Stanford’s most stunning structure. But is it an effective laboratory? Most people who work at the Clark Center think so. The complaints of a few, however, show that some practical considerations in the building’s design may have lost out to aesthetic ones.The comments of these workers especially matter because, at its heart, the Clark Center is a bold attempt to answer a question that faces any multidisciplinary effort: can a carefully planned building bring researchers from different fields together and foster collaboration across disciplines under one roof?{/description}