"A significant force impacting lab design today is a radical shift in science itself. Multi-disciplinary study and nanotechnology are attracting the most funding and best talent, but traditional facilities do not meet the needs of these types of research," says Richard Rietz, Ph.D., an authority on research buildings and one of the judges for R&D Magazine's 2003 Lab of the Year Award.

Much of today's cutting-edge science is being conducted in crossover areas like bio-medical engineering, polymer electronics, and computational biology. Labs built exclusively for traditional disciplines, like chemistry or physics, can't accommodate the evolving needs of these researchers.

"Modern labs need to have a little bit of everything: tissue culture rooms, clean rooms, computers, and other tools all in one place. The current challenge is how to create something akin to a scientific art studio without breaking the bank," says Rietz.

A flood of inexpensive analytical instrumentation, and the emergence of liquid chromatography as the primary separation tool of choice have also taxed space in many labs. Higher churn rates of both staff and programs, combined with greater economic risk, are also increasing pressures within organizations to improve operating efficiency.

External pressures such as the movement to adopt standardized national building codes and a sudden resurgence in the study of infectious organisms—a result of the Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act—are also affecting the shape of modern research environments.

"It's the synergy of all these forces that are changing what we describe as an appropriate lab space," says Rietz. "Facility engineers and lab design architects may have to deal with four or five of these forces at once, and sometimes they're contradictory."

New Challenges, Diverse Solutions

The recent cross-pollination approach to science is now fostering the world's first trans-disciplinary labs, such as the Stanley Biosciences and Bioengineering Facility currently under construction at the University of California Berkeley.

Berkeley's strategy, called the "zoned" or "co-location" approach, features labs situated in different zones of the same building. When the eleven-floor, 285,000-sf facility opens in 2006, it will house an integrated combination of chemistry, physics, and biology labs. Research teams will work with each other, interacting from zone to zone.

"The idea with co-location is that if you need to work in someone else's lab, you can," says Rietz.

Stanford University's newly-built three-wing Clark Center addresses many of these same issues with a range of different, somewhat radical, strategies. The Stanford project, termed Bio X—indicating a cross of medicine, engineering, biology, and computer science—consists of three wings designed to encourage crossover collaboration and diversity. Closed zones house all work space requiring walls, like tissue culture rooms, cold rooms, and fume hoods. The lab's other zones are open, flexible, and devoid of casework or walls. Furniture consists of carts, stands, tables, and racks that can be moved depending on desired configuration. The facility was designed from the ground up to encourage collaboration and diversity from across Stanford's entire scientific community.

Support services including water, electricity, gasses, and networking are installed in grids throughout the ceiling. In the open zones, everything is on wheels and cords hang from the ceiling on j-hooks. Carts are deliberately non-rectangular to encourage people to rethink the way things fit together and to blur the divisions between lab teams. Even the faculty offices, which are made of modular frosted-glass cubes, can be moved.

"In traditional labs, the location of services dictates the floor plan. In the Clark Center, the services are adaptable to support the researcher's needs," says Tully Shelley III, principal architect with MBT Architecture, a primary partner in the project.

The Little Things Matter

Nanotechnology, the creation of materials and devices at the nanometer (billionth of a meter) scale, is another force that is revolutionizing research space in the new millennia.

"Nanotech is not a science, it is an enabling technology. Designers have to consider that this is totally new, and soon parts of it will be showing up in labs everywhere," says Rietz.

Nanotech facilities require specific top-down design configured around costly tool sets involving hazardous gasses, complex exhaust systems, and highly sensitive equipment with strict vibration criteria requiring specialized floor designs.

"The general rule is that the initial cost of tools for a nanofabrication facility exceeds the cost of the building. The complete tool set may be three or four times the cost of the facility," says Rietz.

In contrast to the flexible approach of multi-disciplinary labs, only pure nanotech buildings are currently in development, almost all of them at national laboratories or universities with major engineering programs.

Age of Instrumentation

Improvements in low-cost modular instrumentation, particularly liquid chromatography, are flooding lab space with equipment, increasing space density, heat load, and solvent storage issues.

"Almost every technique is instrumented today and, because of lower costs, modularization, and intelligence-on-board, instruments are being brought into labs at an unprecedented rate," says Rietz. "People bench space is being converted to instrument bench space."

One response, rendered at the 15,000-sf Bayer Pharmaceuticals High Technology Center in West Haven, Conn., is to create "dance floors" where fixed casework is situated around the perimeter of a building, opening up the center areas to accommodate mobile equipment, again with services distributed through ceiling panels.

Liquid chromatography (LC) technology is becoming increasingly prolific in a variety of labs because it can be used to analyze both organic molecules and biological compounds. Having more than a dozen chromatographs in a single modern chemistry lab is not uncommon. As more LC equipment appears, labs are pressured to find bench space. LC tools also require large quantities of solvents which create potential conflicts with fire code restrictions.

"Code interpretations are becoming more literal. Lab managers can no longer get away with saying, 'the bottle is only half empty.' Every bottle is counted now as full," says Rietz. "Since each LC often has two to three gallons of solvent in use, it is becoming more logistically difficult to put these devices in buildings."

Housing Virtual Science

Many of today's scientists simulate experiments on computer. Computational analysis requires high-speed connectivity and quiet space where researchers can focus for long hours in low light.

"We have a growing population of researchers, sometimes whole teams, who are conducting work in 'dry' labs, or what are also called lab-offices," says Rietz.

According to Rietz, there have been at least four responses to this issue. The first is to create a separate specialized computer suite, as was done at the Stowers Institute in Kansas City, Mo.

The second is to mingle computer space in with the rest of the building. Several new biotech labs have extra offices in the lab zones for the bio-information scientists.

The third method is to make whole blocks of space convertible from wet to dry labs. The University of California San Francisco took this approach at its new facility on the Mission Bay campus. USCF's Genentech Hall houses its computational chemists in lab space by removing the lab furniture and installing modular office units.

The fourth method is to create a separate building altogether, as was done at Stanford's Clark Center where the computational research is housed in its own wing adjacent to the other labs.

External Pressures

Governmental forces are now affecting labs and the operating environments have become much more regulatory. For example, a gray area currently exists regarding building and fire code regulations because there are no uniform national standards. As competing groups advance differing guidelines for standardization, it will become increasingly important for designers to be aware of where new facilities stand.

"Storing materials in accordance with fluctuating building codes is a major tension area. For example, often chemical ratings are tougher under the actual code than are reported on the material's safety data sheets," says Rietz. "Excellent lab buildings designed in the last ten years are now 'non-compliant' under the new codes. If a major modification is made, the building cannot be brought up to code."

Another recent shift in the North American research landscape has been rapid growth in BSL-3 and BSL-4 laboratories due to increased interest in detection of and response to select agents. As implications of the 2001 USA Patriot Act and the Bio-terrorism Preparedness and Response Act are felt, more organizations will have to pay increased attention to the handling and storage of sensitive materials, facility security, individual lab security, and employee access.

"The scientific community is evolving rapidly. Many of these forces weren't even on the radar screen five years ago. Now, more than ever, it's critical that organizations, facility planners, and facility designers keep pace with the trends shaping tomorrow's research space," says Rietz.

By Johnathon Allen

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