Rockefeller University is embarking on a $400 million renovation and construction project to create a state of the art laboratory complex, the largest project at the Upper East Side institution in 15 years.

Citing aging facilities and a need for more workable space, the scientific research university’s plans for its new Collaborative Research Center include gutting the interiors of two pre-war buildings and completely remaking their laboratory space, and building a large glass structure to serve as a connector.

The existing facilities in the two buildings, which account for about a quarter of the total laboratory space on the campus, are outdated and inefficient and act as a deterrent to potential faculty and students, university officials say.

“These are two of our oldest and most historic labs, and they’re frankly not serviceable any longer,” a vice president at Rockefeller University, George Candler, said. “It’s very difficult to do science or recruit people into each of them.”

At the heart of the university’s project is a need for large connected laboratories, Mr. Candler said, as the existing, compartmentalized space does not create an atmosphere that is advantageous for modern scientific research.

“It makes it easier for you to walk out of your lab — to bump into somebody from another lab,” Mr. Candler said of the planned space. “The more you can facilitate interaction, whether it’s formal or casual, is a good thing.”

The two buildings being renovated are on the northeastern corner of the campus and were built in 1916 and 1931; they play home to various forms of biological research.

Renovation efforts are to begin this month, with some of the remodeling and the glass connector building slated for completion by 2010. The university expects the entire project to be finished by 2012.

With construction confined to its somewhat secluded campus east of York Avenue, community leaders say the plans for the Collaborative Research Center have received a relatively muted response from the surrounding residents, especially compared with Rockefeller’s last large construction project.

That building, a 12-story biomedical laboratory constructed over the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive in the early 1990s, inspired a firestorm of community criticism due to its size and impact on the neighborhood.