he proposal to establish an outstation at Grenoble placed before the European Molecular Biology Conference in October 1971 was based on the importance of neutron diffraction for research in molecular biology; this had first revealed its potential as a result of the commissioning of the high flux reactor at Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York. The development of the reactor at the Institut Max Von Laue-Paul Langevin (ILL) at Grenoble provided an even higher neutron flux which it was desired to make available to European biologists in close connection with the main EMBL at Heidelberg.

For several years the EMBL outstation was housed in rented laboratories at the Centre d'Etudes Nucléaires de Grenoble (CENG) although it had been agreed in principle that EMBL would eventually have its own building; the preferred solution was a shared building with ILL for which a formal contract was signed on 13 December 1979. Work started in November 1980 and was completed in the spring of 1982.