Since 1967, our sister publication R&D Magazine has hosted the Laboratory of the Year competition, in which the latest research laboratory facilities are evaluated on all aspects of lab design, construction, and planning by an expert panel of architects, lab planners, engineers, lab users, equipment suppliers, and editors. (BD&C editors have helped judge the last three competitions.)
Past winners include such notable research facilities as the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois; Bayer High Technology Center, Building B36, West Haven, Conn.; James H. Clark Center at Stanford University; and the 2005 winner, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research.
R&D editor-in-chief Tim Studt, who has judged every Lab of the Year competition since 1988, offers the following advice to those involved in laboratory design and construction.
Pre-plan meeting and collaboration areas to be functional, not just "made-up" spaces into which furniture is placed.
Ensure that fume hoods are properly designed, installed, and tested to all current standards. Employ design consultants for specialized designs.
Ensure that lab designs meet current standards and design protocols when the lab is completed, not just when it is designed (for long-term projects, design guidelines can change from start to finish).
Determine flow patterns for people, material deliveries, waste disposal, and safety egress/ingress so that they do not overlap.
Provide adequate setbacks for densely populated sites.
Use recyclable or environmentally green construction materials whenever possible.
Provide glazing for the task at hand. Don't provide too much external lighting for researchers doing microarray fluorescence studies, for example.
Involve researchers in the design stage. Obtaining input from users early on will save on redesigns and cost overruns further down the project cycle path.
Design in an appropriate mix of external and internal lab lighting.
For daylighting, determine how lighting will be provided in low-light conditions or at night.
Provide an adequate rationale for renovating a lab or performing major structural changes that might better be obtained by building an entirely new structure.
Provide an adequate balance of lab space to researcher office space. Ask the potential users what's most appropriate for their work activities.
Plan how future lab changes might be implemented.
For renovations, plan how the existing occupants will be supported during the complete renovation process.
Offer a balance between the external design and the lab design. Great places to work should look good and function better.
Provide for future increased security measures. Clients today are asking architects to add security measures that in past years would have been considered impractical or not cost effective.
Be creative in the external and internal structural design to integrate functional features in the design.
Award-winning lab designs provide a balance of great architectural design, effective construction, good landscaping, site planning, cost-effective planning, attention to detail and the users' planned work environment, and planning for future changes and modifications.
Do not substitute swing-arm localized exhaust systems for processes traditionally performed in a fume hood.
Do not design small, tight conference rooms; they're not competitive with current designs.
Do not perform animal testing in anything other than suitable areas, such as specifically designed surgical or necropsy suites.
Do not consider purchased equipment that can be placed within any laboratory room (i.e., analytical instruments, NMR suites, scanning electron microscopes, mechanical testing systems, etc.) as an asset of a new lab.
Do not consider flexible shielding as suitable bio-safety containment.
"What We Learned" is a new department that codifies lessons learned from designing and constructing key building types. Future installments will look at manufacturing facilities, retail, offices, convention centers, hotels, and multifamily buildings. Send suggestions to Dave Barista: dbarista@reedbusiness.com.
An ambitious conversion of a former candy factory into a multidisciplinary lab facility in Cambridge, Mass., and a colorful renovation of an eye research clinic in Boston took top honors in the R&D 2005 Lab of the Year competition. The annual awards program, co-sponsored by R&D Magazine and the Scientific Equipment and Furniture Association, honors excellence in lab design, construction, and planning.
While searching for an ideal site in Cambridge for its research headquarters, Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis discovered a historic gem near MIT's Technology Square.
The abandoned 1927 Necco factory—where the colorful, quarter-sized wafer candies were once made—offered numerous advantages for Novartis. Its proximity to MIT and a plethora of biotech firms would help with recruiting top talent. The structure offered generous floor-to-floor heights (14½ feet), expansive windows, and large, open floor plates. And the gut-and-rehab job would take just 18 months from design through construction.
Novartis poured $200 million into the historic factory to convert the structure into 304,000 sf of labs, lab support spaces, and offices for 700 employees.
Designed by local architect The Stubbins Associates, the lab plan adheres to the factory's H-shaped configuration. Labs in the south wing are double-loaded on a single, central corridor, with lab support, private offices, and open office zones in the center. Labs in the smaller north wing are located on the perimeter only, with lab support and offices toward the center.
Circulation corridors in each wing are punctuated with a round "bubble room" conference area. From there, a larger corridor feeds into a new six-story, amoeba-shaped atrium carved out of the center of the structure.
Because the Necco factory is a landmark building, its exterior façade could not be altered. Local architect Tsoi/Kobus & Associates specified replacement windows that matched the existing units. The brick exterior was restored and a new glass entryway was constructed on the west side of the building. (Preservation officials permitted the new entry because it replaced a nondescript loading dock.) The factory's candy-striped rooftop water tower was repainted with the DNA double helix in candy colors.
An adjacent 20,000-sf power plant building was gutted and remade into a full-service cafeteria and 180-seat auditorium.
Occupied in August 2004, the $200 million Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research won Lab of the Year in the adaptive reuse category.
"Scores of other buildings have been adapted for other, less technical building types," said Lab of the Year judge Peter Van Vechten, AIA, associate partner with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Chicago. "However, this has rarely been the case for a state-of-the-art research facility."
Founded in 1950 by famed retinal surgeon Charles L. Schepens, the Schepens Eye Research Institute has grown to become the largest independent eye research institute in the U.S. The nonprofit organization conducts research on the structure, function, and diseases of the eye and related tissues.
For much of its existence, Schepens has operated out of adjacent lab buildings in downtown Boston. Outdated and disorganized, the lab facilities were in dire need of a facelift.
The $19.7 million gut-and-rehab project involved renovating three floors of labs and redesigning the facility's main entrance and lobby area.
The redesign by Payette Associates, Boston, restored the building's original racetrack corridor scheme, which, after numerous renovations, had become a jumble of small, closed labs and offices. Open, modular labs are located on the perimeter, with lab support in the center and research investigator offices in the corners. The redesign increased overall lab space by 120% and more than doubled the ratio of support space to lab space.
Payette employed a palette of colors for the vinyl composite tile flooring and walls to lend a sense of visual stimulation and assist with wayfinding. Walls separating the open labs are red, with blue, green, and gold accent walls dispersed throughout the lab areas.
The labs are furnished with sleek casework finished with white laminate surfaces and wood doors and drawer fronts. Semi-circular storage and sink bays cap the end of each lab bench.
The project was split into two phases. First, the mechanical, electrical, and life-safety systems were overhauled to meet code, while the lab remained fully operational. Then, lab contractor ADP Marshall, Rumford, R.I. (now part of Fluor Corp.), gutted and renovated the lab and lab support spaces in four sequences. In each sequence, research groups moved into swing space in the prior tenant's vacated lab while their own lab space was rebuilt. By sequencing construction in this manner, lab groups never had to move more than once. This approach also allowed Schepens to place compatible research groups adjacent to each other. The phased occupancy spanned 2002 through 2004.
Lab of the Year judge Stanley Stark, managing partner with HLW, New York, called the project "a breathtaking transformation" of an outdated lab facility into a "comfortable yet exciting place to work."
