Florida State University (FSU) has designed its new Life Sciences Teaching and Research Center with just that kind of flexibility, and though the building is not scheduled to be occupied until March 2008, the approach already is proving beneficial.

“We’re hiring as we’re constructing,” explains Timothy Moerland, Ph.D., biology professor and chairman of FSU’s biology department. “We’re putting in a fume hood for someone, and I’m thankful that we made it so easy to do that.”

The $61.5-million, 93,000-nsf (171,000-gsf) building will house 30 research labs—including some BSL-3 labs—12 teaching labs, a 150-seat auditorium, and a shared animal care facility and vivarium in its interior five stories; in addition, there will be a roof-top greenhouse and an open cloister on the ground.

At FSU, the Department of Biological Science is an integrative and interdisciplinary department that includes all aspects of biology, from evolution and ecology, to neurosciences, genetics, and molecular biology, and computational biology.

“This is one big-tent biology department spread across four buildings,” says Moerland. “It’s a department that has a high research profile, high standards of productivity, and high expectations for the 2,200 undergraduate biology majors—by far the largest major on campus—and more than 100 graduate students.”

The Life Sciences Teaching and Research Center, which will replace and double the capacity of the oldest of the four biology buildings, will help fill out FSU’s new science quad, which also includes the College of Medicine and the Psychology Department. A fourth building site is available, but no decision has been made yet regarding who will occupy it.

Over-Design the Specialized Spaces

One feature the original occupants of the old 1950s science building never could have foreseen is the growing field of computational biology and the universal need for data servers.

“Servers and computational resources are becoming exceptionally important to all aspects of research, and this is a trend that is going to continue unabated for the future,” says Moerland. “Almost all of biology is moving into some aspect of information technology.”

Just as museums create digital archives of their collections, research facilities make their collections available and searchable remotely with digital databases.

“We have a substantial herbarium with plant collections of the Southeast,” says Moerland. “Those physical holdings are going to remain in one of our other buildings, but the electronic version will be housed in the server room in this new building. At least five other programs have a similar emphasis, all of which created an explosive growth in the demand for servers and IT space.”

Knowing this trend exists and will likely continue placed unusual demands on the building’s electrical contractors.

“There is conventional wisdom that says you should provide somewhere in the order of 45 to 60 watts per sf of server room space,” he says. “This represents both the electrical end and also the heat load that would be generated and would have to be removed by the HVAC system. Our analysis indicated that this would have been a drastic mistake on the low side.”

The servers currently slated to go into the building would require at least twice that wattage. Taking future expansion into account, planners decided to increase the number to 150 watts per square foot. The server room, which measures only 200 sf, requires two air-handling units.

Planners took a similar approach when designing the BSL-3 suite by allowing space for more investigators than is currently required at that level of biocontainment. The suite is designed to accommodate any combination of one, two, or three researchers at BSL-3, while the remaining labs operate at a lower level.

“We used computer interfaces and door interlock systems to provide as much flexibility as possible with air flow and appropriate staging of opening door locks,” says Moreland. “This is a space that is not entirely locked up into a BSL-3 profile when we don’t have a full complement of BSL-3-quality research going on.”

It is expensive to build BSL-3 labs that might for a time house tissue culture research, but it is much more expensive to find later that you have less BSL-3 space than you need.

“We had to retrofit a BSL-3 lab into another science building, and it was incredibly inconvenient, hideously expensive, and enormously frustrating,” he says.

FSU also obviated the need to retrofit for fume hoods by over-designing the wet labs with extra ducting. The fume hoods themselves are very expensive and take up a lot of bench space, so it made more sense not to buy more than was needed. Fume hoods are easy to buy at a later date, but retrofitting the ducting is very expensive. This approach proved useful recently when the University hired a researcher who needed an extra fume hood.

Flexible Construction

Some of the features that anticipate future renovations are more mundane than server rooms and fume hoods. For example, some long interior walls are free of utility conduits in case the room is ever split into smaller spaces and doors need to be added. If the utilities run along the ceiling instead of through the wall, adding a door will be as simple as cutting a hole in the wall.

Another flexible element was the use of modular lab designs on each floor, and then stacking the modules from floor to floor. This allows all of the teaching labs to be converted to research labs with little more than cosmetic changes. It was important, however, to design all the labs with teaching in mind, because teaching labs have unique requirements for lines of sight that do not exist in research labs. This is another example of over-designing to maintain the highest level of flexibility.

“Line of sight is the planning element that is irreducible,” says Moerland. “That dictates how much one can do when modifying designs and layouts.”

In the long run, all of these features make the building more user-friendly.

Moerland stresses the need to “plan for use and not function. This is a facility that people use, which is not always compatible with the idea of cramming as much function as possible into a space,” he says. “Keep in mind that people need to work here.”

The work environment includes a need to collaborate with colleagues and students, and that requires space set aside for scheduled as well as spontaneous gatherings. Small conference spaces are included among faculty offices for professors to meet with each other and their students.

“The idea is that this is a space that would welcome those hallway exchanges, facilitate the idea of following up a conversation without the need to schedule and check into a formal conference room,” says Moerland.

The building also serves many students with needs different from those of the researchers. For them, designers included wireless hot spots where students on their way to the teaching laboratories or classes can meet for discussions or to do homework.

It is tempting during value engineering to eliminate gathering areas as “wasted space,” but everyone involved in this project saw the value in retaining them.

“One thing that came out of the planning process, which everyone agreed on, was the need for spaces for students, both graduate and undergraduate,” he says. “Sometimes those spaces need to be defended when people are looking for ways to cut costs.”

By Lisa Wesel

We welcome your Questions and Comments

Copyright 2008 Tradeline Inc.
All Rights Reserved
ISSN: 1096-4894