On 8 October, the Science Gateway, the new “door” designed by Renzo Piano and then developed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop in Paris, will be inaugurated at CERN in Geneva.

The project aims to welcome the 150 thousand visitors that the laboratory was forced to refuse every year. Thus, the Director General of CERN, Fabiola Giannotti involved Piano. Raised to 6 meters in height, the project has a wooded area that follows the orography of the territory. Two suspended tunnels – symbolically echoing the underground particle accelerator – connect the existing buildings with a new 900-seat auditorium, which can be divided into four spaces.

The new volume also houses educational spaces for children from 5 years up, a new entrance, a shop, and a restaurant. The building incorporates some characteristic features of the architecture of the starchitect, steel supporting structure, glass that allows light to get in and shows outside what happens inside the spaces, and visible cables and pipes colored in shades of blue, yellow, and red.