The Yale University Environmental Sciences Center (ESC) integrates teaching and research activities of five distinct University departments: Forestry and Environmental Sciences, Geology and Geophysics, Anthropology, Ecology, and Envolutionary Biology, and the Peabody Museum of Natural History.  The ESC is an addition to and inter-connects with the Peabody Museum of Natural History and the Kline Geology Laboratories (KGL), allowing resources to be shared between all three buildings.  It is designed to bring together faculty from a variety of disciplines to foster collaborative research and shared resources.  Interdisciplinary interaction is encouraged through “commons” (small, informal conversation areas) where researchers, students, and faculty can meet to discuss issues of shared interest.  The research laboratories are based on a flexible module that accommodates the wide variety of research activities and methods employed by the various disciplines. The design also incorporates a light well, which serves as the unifying space in the ESC, around which the collections, the majority of research laboratories and offices are arranged.  The light well acts as the source of indirect, natural light for the preservation and management areas of the collections, which, due to stringent curatorial UV requirements, have no windows to the outside.