Science comes alive in ground-breaking human genome research center
The south side of the facility constitutes the main entry and is approached by landscaped forecourt whose paving continues into the ground floor of the building. Photo: Ben Rahn. Click to enlarge
The project: Univ. of Toronto, Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research. Twelve-story human genomics research tower. 248,378 ft2. $86 million ($100 million Canadian); $346/ft2. Funding was derived from federal, provincial, and university sources, as well as private donors including Toronto philanthropist Terrence Donnelly, who gave $13 million for the project.
The team: architectsAlliance, Toronto, and Behnisch Architekten, Stuttgart, Germany (architecture); Flad & Associates, Madison, Wis. (lab consultant); H.H. Angus & Associates Ltd., Toronto (MEP engineering); Halcrow Yolles (Yolles Partnership Ltd.), Toronto (structural engineering); Diana Gerrard Landscape Architecture, Toronto (landscape architecture); Vanbots Construction Corp., Markham, Ontario (general contractor).
The users: Specialists in human genome and disease research, affiliated with the Univ. of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine, the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, and the department of applied science and engineering. The Donnelly Centre is organized as a collaborative, interdisciplinary research center, and also provides training for students. Occupancy: ~400, including 40 principal investigators as well as 100 post-docs and 200 to 300 graduate students.
The schedule: Ground was broken in late 2002, with initial occupancy at the end of 2005.
The goals: The Univ. of Toronto’s Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research (TDCCBR) is Canada’s foremost human genome research center. TDCCBR required a facility that was functional, highly flexible, and technologically advanced.
The western façade of the Donnelley Centre is enlivened by colorful wall elements visible through the fritted glass; the bay window volumes enclose stairways, lounges, and cafes. Photo: Tom Arban. Click to enlarge.
Located at the southeast corner of the university’s St. George campus, the facility is in the center of the city’s densely built historic district. On a site formerly used as a small parking and service area, the narrow building sits between two historic buildings on College Street, a main city thoroughfare. Links to these 1920s-era facilities—the Rosebrugh Building and the Fitzgerald Building—were key to the design, as was connection with the Medical Science Building to the north.
The TDCCBR is intended to be both a symbolic and physical connection that bridges the academic community to the north, the medical community to the south, and the general public who live and work in the city. The design emphasizes environmental sustainability, connections to the surrounding urban context, transparency, and informal spaces that promote collaboration among the organization’s various disciplines.
The solutions: Standing in contrast to neighboring brick buildings, TDCCBR is a slender tower marked by a façade that is light and colorful. In response to the narrow building site, the architects designed a rectangular 12-story structure. To relate to the scale of surrounding buildings, TDCCBR is broken into two vertically stacked volumes, which are divided by the intermediate sixth level that houses mechanical systems for lower levels. Cinched like a belt, the mechanical level allows the laboratory floors to be flexible, open spaces free of mechanical rooms.
Laboratory space is organized below the intermediate level on floors two through five, as well as above on floors seven through 12. Mechanical systems serving the upper levels are located on the rooftop in an amoeba-shaped, stainless-steel penthouse.
Three ovoid seminar rooms punctuate the ground floor councourse, which also contains a cafeteria, lounges, and offices. Design: Behnish Architekten/ architectsAlliance. Click to enlarge.
Each lab level has six principal researchers’ offices, 38 research associate stations, lounges, cold rooms, and equipment rooms. The research associate stations are organized in an open, loft-like space along the eastern perimeter, while PIs’ offices overlook a forecourt at the building front. Wet and dry laboratories are located in the central service spine, which runs north-south through the middle of each floor. The laboratories are designed for easy conversion: wet labs can be altered to accommodate biology, chemistry, or bioinformatics usage. Likewise, dry labs can be converted to wet labs by adding fume hoods and laboratory casework.
A spacious circulation corridor is on the western perimeter, providing entry to the labs and research associate stations beyond. Connected by staircases, the corridors on levels two to five overlook the ground-floor atrium garden, and provide informal spaces for employee interaction and conversation. On levels seven to 12, the bay window volumes contain interconnecting stairways, lounges, and cafes. There are three double- and triple-height gardens located along the perimeters of the upper levels.
In contrast to the upper laboratory levels, the ground level is an open, public concourse that unfolds as a modulated landscape. Designed as a north-south thoroughfare, the concourse allows the public to travel freely through the building to access the city center to the south, the university campus to the north, and existing buildings on northern, eastern, and western perimeters. The concourse contains a cafeteria, lounges, offices, seminar rooms, and a five-level glazed atrium that directly borders the adjacent Rosebrugh Building to the west.
Lab floors have research associate seating at the eastern perimeter, with labs and support space at the interior. PI offices overlook the courtyard at the front (south) side of the facility.
Design: Behnish Architekten/ architectsAlliance. Click to enlarge.
Interior and exterior pathways establish new and maintain existing connections to surrounding buildings. TDCCBR is adjoined to the Medical Science Building through ground-level walkways and a glass bridge on the sixth level, while an upper-level connection links TDCCBR to the Rosebrugh Building.
The highlights: Transparency, flexibility, connectivity, and function informed the design of the interior spaces. The laboratory levels are designed in a repetitive floorplan that maximizes efficiency of space, flexibility, and access to natural light. An airy, spacious interior and increased floor-to-floor height is achieved by omitting suspended ceilings, exposing services and superstructure, and selecting simple, durable materials. Shallow floorplates and glass walls allow for a high level of transparency throughout the labs, while work zones are differentiated by color, lighting, and millwork.
A feeling of openness is conveyed by the daylit lab bays and exposed mechanical and utility infrastructure. Photo: Ben Rahn. Click to enlarge.
In the ground-level concourse, light, color, and glass were used to evoke a generously sized space that blurs the boundaries between indoors and outdoors. Contrast between light and color is achieved through white terrazzo floors, white ceilings, exposed concrete columns, and glass partitions, which play against a palette of green plants, the pale brick wall, and the colored walls of the seminar rooms. Sinuous in form, the three seminar rooms are encircled by red, black, and white glass-mosaic walls.
The atrium shares the Rosebrugh Building’s buff-colored brick facade, which was restored in the design process. The space is simply landscaped with 45-ft-high bamboo trees and liriope grass, creating an invigorating microclimate where visitors, employees, and those passing through can relax and converse.
The exterior granite-paved forecourt—flanked by gardens and neighboring buildings—provides a dramatic entrance. The granite pavement continues into the concourse, contributing to an indoor-outdoor sensibility.
The Rosebrugh Building’s buff-colored brick facade was restored in the design process, and now marks the western edge of a five-story atrium in the TDCCBR building. Photo: Tom Arban. Click to enlarge.
The cladding of each elevation is treated differently, according to the facility’s various programmatic and climatic requirements. The south facade—which serves as the main face of the building—is double-glazed to create a richly textured transparency, as well as to provide acoustic and solar control. The east façade is clad in color-laminated glass, while the west facade is glazed with patterned ceramic-fritted glass, which the architects used to enrich the building mass, as well as to meet privacy, shading, and amenity needs. The ceramic-frit glass has a dot-matrix pattern that was employed to manage solar gain. The west façade is further articulated by bay-window volumes that house lounges, cafes, and stairways.
Color is extensively used in the building interior and exterior. Shades of yellow, blue, orange, and red playfully animate the eastern and western façades. The multi-hued western façade is created by the colored interior walls, which reveal themselves through the fritted, patterned glass.
Sustainability: The TDCBBR is a high-performance building that incorporates both passive and active sustainable design measures to increase energy efficiency and promote employee quality of life. The building is divided into two energy zones that are powered by different sources. The gardens, lounges, and corridors are operated by a mechanically assisted natural ventilation system, whereas laboratories and offices are operated by an energy-efficient mechanical system.
In an effort to minimize the building’s overall energy requirements, the labs and offices were mechanically separated from common areas, which are able to sustain higher mean temperatures. The architects also challenged traditional ventilation standards for laboratory spaces, and reduced air changes per hr to 10 to 12 (previous facilities were designed to more than 20 ach).
The double façade of the south elevation has 2.5 ft of air space between the exterior single-glazed skin and the interior double-glazed skin. With sun blinds on the interior side, the single-glazed skin reduces heat loss or gain, and provides wind and acoustic protection. Retractable perforated aluminum louvers are located between the façades. The louvers further reduce heat gain, redirect daylight into the building, and modulate the natural stack-effect to heat or vent the interstitial space. The PIs’ offices on the southern side have operable windows and sun blinds, which—while controlled by individual users—are connected to the computerized Building Management System, ensuring override control. When users open their operable windows, programmable heating and cooling units in the ceiling switch off.
The ground-level garden atrium has a fritted-glazed roof and automated operable windows, which are connected to the Building Management System. The space naturally ventilates the corridors on laboratory floors two to five.
The double- and triple-height gardens on the upper levels filter air and provide oxygen and moisture to the common areas. The gardens act as lounges and are landscaped with fig and olive trees, creating space for relaxation and informal meetings. The gardens are irrigated and drained as part of the building’s storm-water reclamation system.
The results: The TDCCBR building has gained recognition from both users and the architectural community. In 2006, the design received a Royal Institute of British Architects International Award and was short-listed for the Lubetkin Prize, sponsored by the international journal The Architectural Review. The facility also received an Award of Excellence from the Ontario Assn. of Architects, and was a recipient of the 2006 “Designed for Success” award from Business Week and Architectural Record magazines.
Students are equally enthusiastic. Mariam Alexander, a second-year master’s student in medical genetics, stated in the spring 2006 edition of the Univ. of Toronto Magazine that the facility represents a vast improvement over her previous windowless space in the adjacent Medical Sciences Building. “Here you can see the sun rise and set; there’s actually daylight,” she said.
Professor Brenda Andrews, a leading yeast genomics researcher and the TDCCBR’s first director, says the collaborative effort made possible by the new facility will extend beyond the walls of the building to the U of T’s teaching hospitals. “The fundamental discoveries made at the CCBR will mesh well with the work of our teaching hospitals and empower us in the quest to take discoveries from genes to populations and from molecules to communities.”
— Julie S. Higginbotham, editor
(From information provided by Taylor & Co. on behalf of the project’s architects.)
