Lab of the Year entries
reveal eight current trends
By Julie S. Higginbotham
Part 1:
Lab of the Year: Trends Analysis
Fig. 1. Purdue Univ’s Birck Nanotechnology Center has one of the first, if not the first, functional nanobiotechnology cleanrooms. Plan: HDR. Click to enlarge
Since 1967, the Laboratory of the Year competition administered by R&D Magazine has generated excitement every spring. Winning projects receive a high degree of attention, including detailed feature articles and conference presentations. The winners in the various categories (see box,below) are singled out for excellence by a panel of knowledgeable judges.
But there’s another story embedded in the Lab of the Year competition: the trends revealed by the entire field of entrants, including those that do not win awards. Annually, many projects that are of high quality—either as complete buildings or as examples of specific design strategies—fail to receive the nod as winners. As with all kinds of architectural competitions, judges’ opinions are subjective, and are based on descriptions and photos rather than building tours. The winning projects always provide inspiration and useful information. But an examination of the also-rans may be equally illuminating.
Lab of the Year judging criteria
Laboratory of the Year judges evaluate submittals consisting of written materials and digital images. Judges have several days to review the submittals individually, and then gather to make decisions in a freewheeling one-day session. Judges can select (or choose to withhold) projects for recognition in the following categories:
• Laboratory of the Year (new, renovated, and/or adaptive reuse). The Lab of the Year must combine excellence for science with architectural excellence.
• High Honors (excellent projects that just miss Lab of the Year status).
• Special Mention (projects honored for one specific, notable aspect of their design).
Judges evaluate projects using the following categories:
• Siting.
• Planning.
• Circulation (people).
• Circulation (materials).
• Aesthetics.
• Working conditions.
• Suitability for research.
• Lab design.
• Office design/location.
• Animal facilities.
• Library/study facilities.
• Conference/meeting/interaction spaces.
• Engineering design.
• Energy efficiency and other “green” strategies.
• Cost to build.
Buildings must have been occupied within the 18 months prior to the competition in order to be eligible. Entry materials for the 2008 annual Laboratory of the Year program will be available on-line in the next few weeks; visit www.rdmag.com for details. Entries will be due Feb. 1, 2008.
This two-part article reviews eight current themes in lab design based on an analysis of the entry pool for the 2007 competition, including:
• Boundary-busting buildings (nano-bio-geo-chem-eomics).
• Let’s get physical (cleanrooms, high-bay, data centers).
• Mission critical (homeland security and beyond).
• Let there be light (even in the basement).
• How green is your lab? (green mandatory; LEED optional).
• Playing it safe (but maximizing chemical use).
• Taking it outside (collaboration beyond the perimeter walls).
• The rising tide lifts all boats (excellence in unlikely places).
Fig. 2. The Watson laboratory for biogeochemistry at Woods Hole includes controlled-temperature rooms where open salt water samples are studied. Photo @Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Click to enlarge.
These themes are occurring more often among the facilities entered in the competition, indicating that they are moving into the mainstream of quality lab design. Most of the entered projects were conceived and designed at least three years ago—sometimes a good deal earlier than that—so the entries are often more a reflection of the current state-of-the-art than truly paradigm-shattering buildings.
Nevertheless, design choices that judges once perceived as notable (for instance, modular labs, open labs with flexible furniture and top-down utility distribution, offices separated from labs, and buildings organized around large atriums) have now become commonplace. The current entrants’ ideas about what represents excellent, modern design are likely to become even more mainstream in the future.
Though these two articles will put the primary focus on projects that did not receive awards, the winning projects (described in the May 2007 issue of Laboratory Design) also exemplify many of the trends discussed.
Boundary-busting buildings Multidisciplinary buildings are nothing new, but the traditional model places separate disciplines in their own wings or floors and tries to encourage collisions in the atrium or coffee bar. Numerous buildings are still being designed this way, with varying degrees of success. The newer model, however, is more truly interdisciplinary, with the labs and adjacencies reflecting the increasingly blurry boundaries between sciences once considered unrelated.
The Birck Nanotechnology Center at Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, Ind., is part of an elite group of sophisticated academic nanotech buildings created in the past few years, with more on the horizon. The Birck facility was designed by HDR, and reflects features pioneered by the firm at the NIST Advanced Measurement Laboratory, Gaithersburg, Md., which was a High Honors winner in 2005. Purdue claims to have the first functional nanobio cleanroom, and certainly it’s the first we’ve seen in a Lab of the Year entry. The purpose is to bridge the gap between carbon, organic cleanrooms and silicon-based, inorganic cleanrooms.
This space (Fig. 1, top of page) is nestled within a large, traditional nanofab cleanroom and incorporates sealed pass-through boxes and robust sterilization features. The building has traditional biological and biochemistry labs as well as a 25,000 ft2 cleanroom with ISO Class 3, 4, and 5 space. (Fifteen percent is Class 5, which is equivalent to traditional Class 100.) A passageway provides access to the new Bindley Bioscience Center to make it easier for scientists to stage interdisciplinary projects.
The Woods Hole (Mass.) Oceanographic Institution was a High Honors winner this year with a two-building project that included the boundary-busting Biogeochemistry Building, also known as the Stanley W. Watson Laboratory. Designed by Ellenzweig Associates, the Watson lab is designed for explorations in a relatively new field that studies the chemical interactions of living things with rocks, sediments, seawater, the sea floor, and hydrothermal vents. The 35,600 ft2 building includes not only traditional biology labs but also radioisotope, geology, geophysics, and marine chemistry labs, as well as a geochemistry cleanroom and a cold lab for saltwater research (Fig. 2, top, ;eft).
The Multidisciplinary Research Building at the Univ. of Kansas, Lawrence, is a good example of how the boundary-busting paradigm is influencing science construction at institutions not traditionally considered research powerhouses (Fig. 3, below). The 106,000 ft2 facility was designed by Cannon Design and its local partner, Gould Evans, in consultation with Health, Education + Research Associates. Faculty are only allowed space here on a competitive basis, and the projects they propose must be at least potentially interdisciplinary.
Fig. 3. In the bioanalytics lab of the Univ. of Kansas Multidisciplinary Research Building, experiments are conducted that require modifying the light environments in three adjacent bench zones. Multiple cubicle curtain tracks and multi-stage individual lighting controls accommodate this. Photo: Univ. of Kansas. Click to enlarge.
This single building supports work in bioinformatics, bioanalytical chemistry, drug discovery, stable isotope geology, geomicrobiology (for instance, interactions of bacteria and metals), and nanoscience. It includes BSL-3 lab space and Class 100 and 1000 cleanrooms. The facility embodies an unusual degree of complexity and provides further evidence that the drive toward interdisciplinary work may be inexorable.
Let’s get physical At least half the labs covered in Laboratory Design’s New Projects department these days are either wholly or partly devoted to physical sciences or engineering. If the ’90s were the decade of life science construction, the “oughts” may be the decade of nanotech and other types of physical sciences labs, putting increasing emphasis on extreme environmental control. For many buildings this means not only very clean air but also vibration, RF, and EMI control to degrees unheard of only a decade ago.
Hand in hand with this trend comes an emphasis on new space for engineering research, including high-bay labs of many kinds. We expect to continue to see high representation of this building type among the Lab of the Year entrants for at least the next several years.
Fig. 4. Core laser labs on the ground floor support research throughout the Molecular Science & Engineering Building at Georgia Tech. Photo: Korab Photo. Click to enlarge.
The Molecular Science & Engineering Building at Georgia Tech, Atlanta, is a case in point. Designed by CUH2A, the facility is the final stage of a new biotech campus at Georgia Tech, which has already completed environmental sciences, biomedical engineering, and bioengineering/bioscience buildings.
As with the KU Multidisciplinary Research Building, space is allotted on a project-based model, rather than offering any permanent turf for faculty. The building contains chemistry labs but also a great deal of engineering lab space, including chemical/biochemical, electrical, computer, material science, and polymer, textile, and fiber engineering (Fig. 4, above). Like the Birck building, MS&E is intended to provide space for blended sciences such as nanobiotech and nanochemistry.
Fig. 5. The west façade of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab’s Molecular Foundry shows the cantilevered, or “thinking,” portion of the building. The northern section of the concrete plinth contains the facility’s utility plant. Photo: Tim Hursley. Click to enlarge.
The biodefense segment of federal lab construction has generated extensive publicity in recent years, but there’s clear evidence that nanoscience is also a high current priority. Few of the new federally funded nanoscience centers have been entered in the Lab of the Year competition, perhaps because some of them are very impressive as research infrastructure but more modest from an architectural standpoint.
The Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif., is strong on both counts. A cantilevered portion of this user facility juts over a hillside; this “thinking” section contains offices, not labs (Fig. 5, above). This wing is joined to the “making” zone, which consists of very sophisticated research labs, by an interaction, or “exchange,” area.
Fig. 6. The northern façade of the Univ. of Arizona Meinel Optical Sciences Building is an abstraction of a Fresnel lens, while other sections of the cast-in-place concrete structure are covered by a freestanding copper rainscreen. Photo: Bill Timmerman. Click to enlarge.
The Foundry includes very-low-vibration imaging labs and Class 100 and 1000 cleanrooms on the lower floors that are built into the hillside, supporting research with a wide range of substances, from biological and polymer to inorganic and microfabricated. The upper levels provide dry lab computational space, inorganic chemistry labs, and chemistry, biology, and polymer and biopolymer synthesis space.
At the Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, the Meinel Optical Sciences Research Lab is a physical sciences facility that clearly expresses function through architecture. Architects Richärd+ Bauer (designers of the 2006 High Honors winning ISTB2 building at Arizona State) created the 47,000-ft2 facility to provide many labs allowing research in total darkness or at extremely low light levels. The façade combines an array of angled glass panels, reminiscent of the structure of a Fresnel lens, with a freestanding copper rain screen on parts of the building that cannot be daylit (Fig. 6, above). Central light shafts based on the principle of a camera obscura bring daylight into the core discussion and display spaces.
Fig. 7. The CDC’s Div. of Laboratory Sciences (Building 110) combines many current ideas in lab design, including open labs with fume hood alcoves, mobile casework, overhead service carriers, interior glazing, floor patterns for instrument placement, and a sloped ceiling to maximize daylight entering the labs. Photo: Michelle Litvin.Click to enlarge.
Each lab has an overhead flex grid with connections for power, data, and laser. The building provides ample chilled water for laser and equipment cooling, as well as compressed air that supports pneumatic tables for optics instruments. 100% outside air enters the labs at the perimeter wall through a custom low-velocity laminar supply system, which prevents turbulence that might disrupt the experiments. There are Class 10,000 cleanrooms on the eighth floor and a small amount of Class 100 space.
Mission critical We’re seeing the first entries in the upcoming wave of national and regional biocontainment labs funded by the NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The two national labs in Boston and in Galveston are still underway, but several of the regional facilities are finished, including one that occupies part of our 2007 Special Mention winner, the Univ. of Pittsburgh Biomedical Sciences Tower III.
In addition, major biosafety lab projects are underway at Ft. Detrick, Md.; at the main NIH campus in Bethesda, Md.; and at the Rocky Mountain Lab in Hamilton, Mont. The Centers for Disease Control’s Building 18 “hot lab” was our Special Mention winner last year.
An urgent push to rehab or build new first-responder labs at the state level is also evident, encompassing some buildings with a public health emphasis and some focused on agriculture and/or wildlife. Recent examples include significant new labs or additions in Arizona, Michigan, Arkansas, California, Indiana, and Texas. Our Lab of the Year in 1998, the Georgia Public Health Laboratory in Atlanta, was a bellwether for these types of projects.
These buildings are adding a great deal of BSL-3 capacity to the existing stock of biosafety labs, which are also proliferating at academic research institutions.
Fig. 8. The State of Minnesota MDA/MDH Laboratory Building serves both agricultural and public health missions; shown is a typical BSL-3 lab in the bioterrorism suite. Photo: George Heinrich.Click to enlarge.
The Div. of Laboratory Sciences (Building 110) at the CDC’s Chamblee, Ga., campus was designed by Perkins & Will to allow significant reconfiguration “on the fly” by the building users and staff. The client’s top requirement was that the entire facility’s lab and human resources be able to be reorganized into a single unit focused solely on a single environmental emergency.
The mission is high-throughput sample analysis in support of public health, agricultural, emergency response, law enforcement, intelligence, and national security. The lab, which has BSL-3 but not BSL-4 space, can run at least 10,000 analytical tests a day, 24/7; strict chain of evidence protocols are combined with a very robust internet and secure intranet infrastructure.
Most labs have a dance-floor layout with reconfigurable casework and top-down service distribution; fume hoods and sinks are placed in alcoves (Fig. 7, above, left). The overhead carriers have a Unistrut framework that allows a gypsum wall to be inserted between lab bays as desired. The facility also has full interstitial space, which not only facilitates maintenance and flexibility but also provides room for “freezer farms” and supply storage.
Fig. 9. In the lab zone at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, transparency prevails with views across the open interdisciplinary labs to the full-height “glass box” curtain wall on the south side of the building. Photo: Anton Grassl/Esto.Click to enlarge.
An example of a current state-level project is Minnesota’s Dept of Agriculture/Dept. of Health Laboratory Building, designed by HGA with lab consulting by CUH2A. The building represents a new cooperation between the state’s public health and agriculture agencies.
The 176,000-ft2 facility is situated in downtown Minneapolis, near the state Emergency Preparedness Center and other key governmental offices. The lab, including BSL-2 and -3 facilities, has a first-responder public health function as well as a routine public health and agricultural safety function (Fig. 8, above). The state hopes to save money and improve efficiency through consolidation of multiple disparate sites, and by having the agriculture and public health functions in the same place for the first time. The building’s redundancy features are intended to facilitate continuous operation for 20 years without a shutdown.
Let there be light Previous winners pushing daylight manipulation into the mainstream include the Georgia Public Health Lab (Lab of the Year 1998), The Vontz Center at the Univ. of Cincinnati (Special Mention 2000), AstraZeneca Boston (Lab of the Year 2001), and the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State Univ. (Lab of the Year 2006).
Fig. 10. The NMR room in the basement-level imaging facility at the Univ. of Pittsburgh Biomedical Sciences Tower III is bathed in daylight thanks to clerestory windows. An integral crane system and high-bay construction will facilitate future reconfiguration and instrument replacement. Photo: Warren Jagger Photography.Click to enlarge.
Proof of the pudding isn’t a beautifully lit atrium or perimeter-mounted PI offices, but rather how well the design manages to distribute light to the building occupants, including people working in labs and shared office areas. The proliferation of interdisciplinary facilities is moving the internal transparency trend to the fore—for reasons including quality of life, communication, and safety. Almost every entrant in this year’s competition could have been cited as an example in this area.
One of our two High Honors winners this year, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard Univ., in Cambridge, Mass., puts labs in a “glass box” that makes them very visible to the public, as well as bringing ample light inside. Several lab layouts are in use; the one shown in Fig. 9 (above) is typical. A writeup area at the perimeter is separated from the lab zone with full-height glazed walls. Transparency also prevails in the team areas around the elevator lobbies, where the separation from adjacent conference rooms is accomplished with glass walls, and a much-used whiteboard wall flows from one zone to the next. The designer was Elkus Manfredi; Steve Copenhagen was the lab consultant.
Fig. 10 (above) provides a view of the belowground NMR suite at the BST3 tower at the Univ. of Pittsburgh, where a strip of clerestory windows brings light in. The design team stepped back the first floor slab somewhat to make this possible. Often, underground imaging facilities are dark spaces, and judges found this treatment, combined with the judicious use of color, very refreshing. This lab is a good illustration of the degree to which natural light is now seen as a must-have if at all possible given the science involved.
Figs. 11 and 12. The Univ. of Michigan Biomedical Science Research Building features a long glass façade behind which are offices. The administrative portion of the facility is connected to the lab portion, which also has perimeter windows, via bridges that cross a large atrium. Plan: Polshek Partnership; Photo: Jeff Goldberg/ESTO.
The Univ. of Michigan Biomedical Science Research Building, Ann Arbor, is a 472,000-ft2 structure with a façade that takes glass to an extreme (Figs. 11 and 12, above). The offices are in a curved, heavily glazed wing, which faces south; lying behind the office band is a spacious, skylit atrium crossed by a series of bridges. Proceeding to the other side of the facility are procedure rooms featuring punched windows that borrow light from the atrium, then a corridor, a set of lab alcoves, and open labs on the northern perimeter, which also receive abundant daylight. The designer of this facility, which received a regional AIA award, was Polshek Partnership, with Jacobs Consultancy/GPR as the lab consultant.
Fig. 13. A soaring atrium punctuates the center of the Univ. of Texas Heath Science Center’s Fayez S. Sarofim Research Building, providing exciting views from the pedestrian bridges. Photo: Farshid Assassi.Click to enlarge.
The Univ. of Texas Heath Science Center’s Fayez S. Sarofim Research Building, encompassing ~300,000 ft2, is devoted to research in human disease, emphasizing DNA and protein technologies. Like the Michigan BSRB, this lab has an office wing and a lab wing separated by a daylit atrium (Fig. 13, left). The design, by BNIM Architects with Burt Hill, incorporates a sophisticated combination of daylighting strategies, including fritted low-e glass in some zones and a great deal of architectural sunscreening. Offices have large, operable windows to allow natural ventilation when appropriate. Labs have a perimeter writeup zone with a higher ceiling than the open labs adjacent to them, a strategy for maximizing daylighting first observed by LOY judges with the Vontz Center in Cincinnati. The CDC 110 project discussed above also incorporates this design, which makes the most of the floor-to-floor dimensions required for modern lab infrastructure without unduly restricting ceiling heights in zones that don’t require a lot of overhead plumbing and ductwork.
Part two of this article, to be published in November, will discuss four other key trends, including sustainability and safety strategies, outdoor collaboration areas, and the proliferation of high-quality research buildings in unlikely venues.
Julie S. Higginbotham is editor of Laboratory Design. This article is based on a presentation given by the author at the Laboratory Design Fall 2007 Conference, held in St. Louis Sept. 17-19.
Shifts in the entry pool
The overall field of building types entered in this year’s Lab of the Year competition revealed some shifts. About 33% were life sciences research facilities—down from 50% just two years ago. About 28% were multipurpose or multidisciplainary facilities, up from 20% in the 2005 competition. About 22% were devoted to the physical sciences, including nanotech and engineering. The remaining facilities were diverse, including incubators and public health labs.
Client types also are changing somewhat. Research and liberal arts universities, long a hotbed of science construction, continue to constitute the majority of the entrants (45%). Academic medical centers and private biomedical research institutes submitted about 28% of the entries. Government labs, both state and federal, were 17% this year; developer-built labs constituted 10%. For the first time in the past decade, there were no pharmaceutical or commercial labs entered in the competition.
Trends in both the facility types and the client types would be borne out by the larger pool of projects reported in the “New Projects” department of this newsletter, which also reflects a reduced number of pharma projects (not surprising considering the consolidation within Big Pharma) and an increasing number of academic medical center research buildings, as well as a growing emphasis on physical sciences.
