The campus-wide Bio-X initiative was created in 1998 by a group of faculty members to facilitate interdisciplinary research and teaching in bioengineering, biomedicine, and biosciences. Bio-X brings together engineering, chemistry, physics, information sciences, biology, and medicine to launch new research and create new discoveries.

The Clark Center, scheduled for completion in May 2003, is designed as the hub of Bio-X activity, rather than as an independent, self-sustaining facility. The 245,000-gsf building has three wings, three floors, a partial basement, and 146,000 nsf of laboratory space. The comfortable environment and flexible labs are expected to accommodate between 600 and 700 people when the building is fully occupied.

"This building is a hub for interdisciplinary research between the schools of Medicine, Humanities and Sciences, and Engineering," says Maggie Burgett, project manager for the Clark Center. "It's designed to be noticed."

Ten percent of the building is devoted to hotel space for visiting scholars. The space also is for Stanford faculty, as well as faculty from outside the University. The space, consisting of a bench within an existing lab, is for researchers who come to the Center to work on projects for a period usually ranging from six months to a year.

Designed by MBT Architects of San Francisco and Fosters & Partners of London, the total project cost is $146.6 million with $100.3 million in direct construction costs and the remainder for design, utility relocation, and other expenses. The primary functions of the Center are research, food service, shared instrumentation, and education—all of which can be achieved as a result of the building's unusual design.

The purpose of the Clark Center is to maximize interaction, which can lead to enhanced collaboration and eventually, increased research innovation. Designers met this challenge by creating a facility that encourages researchers to share resources, communicate with each other, and collaborate on projects.

Fast-Track Construction Schedule

The Clark Center construction project, designed in seven phases, began in June 2001. Working with the design team and the construction manager, Stanford developed an organized process enabling the project to be implemented with concurrent phases of development.

"We developed the project in multiple phases that required us to do all the programming, design, and construction at the same time," says Burgett. "It was a crazy way to manage a project, but very effective."

The first phase involved narrowing Campus Drive to reduce the barrier of having the School of Medicine on one side of the road and Humanities and Sciences on the other. An additional crossing is planned across Campus Drive to facilitate pedestrian and bicycle access between the two schools. The next two phases include building a tunnel between the School of Medicine and the Clark Center, and moving ahead with foundation work on the building.

The final four phases—the interior core, interior lab support, lab core, and open lab furniture and casework—are designed around specific science initiatives that were outlined by University leaders in January 2002. Designing around the initiatives of biocomputation, biophysics, regenerative medicine, genomics and proteomics, chemical biology, and biodesign forced the team to develop generic lab solutions rather than specific lab plans.

A "gaming" approach was used in which faculty could move pieces representing laboratory furniture and equipment on a large "game board" (floorplan) to determine and understand the implications of the various organization of spaces and sharing strategies that might be arrayed in the building.

"We looked for commonalities among the different sciences that would occupy the building," says Burgett. "There are a lot of common features between biology, physics, and chemistry labs."

Innovative Features

Innovative flexible, ten-foot-high work spaces include accessible utilities, mobile casework, and adaptable infrastructure. Sealed epoxy floors allow work areas to be utilized as wet or dry labs.

A Unistrut ceiling and racks provide drop-down access to standard utility services, such as gas, air, vacuum, electricity, and water. The Unistrut drops are mobile and can be moved easily and inexpensively by unscrewing a few bolts, so that lab spaces can be converted to wet or dry areas to accommodate each researcher’s work. Sinks are the only items that are not mobile.

Researchers can also hang storage shelves from the ceiling to make their work more convenient. Copper feeds and fiber lines are available to meet the needs for high-speed computation. Disconnect valves are readily available for all utilities.

"The Unistrut ceiling is actually an expensive component, but it is one of those trade-off issues where we went with a more expensive ceiling because it gives us more flexibility," says Burgett.

All of the casework is on wheels, as well. A T-shaped docking station, developed by ISEC, is customized to meet the needs of the Clark Center with two levels of shelves. A four-foot building services area above the ceiling includes the ductwork, sprinklers, and smoke detectors. Benches and tables are on wheels so equipment or experiments can be quickly and easily moved.

The Unistrut ceiling is not included in the lab support areas of each room. However, the building services come down from the ceiling through a stainless steel guide to seven feet above the work benches. The structural system includes castellated beams to allow for future modifications.

The final selection of the casework and utility delivery systems in the laboratories was made with extensive use of full size mock-ups of actual materials and systems. In a building near the construction site, a large, high-ceiling space was available for use by the project team. First, the ceiling system for the Clark Center was installed and refined. Then different drop-down utility and casework systems were installed and evaluated. Finally, the effort shifted to the office design, once again leading to final selection of the system to be built in the actual building. The final result is a highly tested system that is broadly understood and accepted by the entire project team, owner, designers, builders, and those who will occupy the building.

Promoting Interaction and Collaboration

Interaction is encouraged with regionally shared facilities, a café, seminar rooms, and an auditorium. Fifteen percent of the building is dedicated to public functions such as conference rooms and classrooms, while nine percent consists of facilities that are shared by people within the Center. The shared facilities include small animal imaging, biocomputation collaboratories, central glasswash, and media prep.

The café is located on the first floor to encourage people to come into the building, and the seminar rooms are situated on the third floor to get visitors to explore the rest of the facility.

"We think of this building as a science mall," says Burgett.

Collaboration is unavoidable by way of the building's unique design which features open labs, plenty of social spaces, and shared instrumentation. There are no interior corridors in the building and the inner courtyards are completely glass. Researchers on the second floor can look across the courtyard into other laboratories. Bridges connect the wings of the building and a raised platform in the center of the courtyard can be used as a stage for lectures or concerts.

"It's forced collaboration. The idea is that you'll see your colleagues or somebody that you need to talk to," says Burgett. "All circulation occurs outside."

Inside-Out Design

One of the most interesting elements of the project is that the building has been literally turned "inside out" compared to the layout of other research facilities. The Clark Center features support spaces on the outside with labs and offices on the inside.

"We put support spaces on the outside and on the closed sides of the building. We brought light into the inner courtyard and we added a lot of circulation so the courtyard becomes the focal point of the building," says Burgett.

Lab support areas are located in the long, straight wings of the building. The basement of the west wing is suited to the sensitive vibration needs of biophysics research. A tunnel connects the wing to an existing tunnel system that serves the medical school.

The south wing features the café that seats 265 people, offices for a new department of bioengineering, and a governance area for administration. The lab spaces in the south wing are dedicated entirely to biocomputation and are completely dry. Lab areas in the east and west wings can be converted to wet or dry space, depending on the researchers' needs.

"The biggest lesson we learned is that any team working on a project of this magnitude has to be flexible because the building has to be adaptable enough to go through a lot of changes," notes Burgett.

By Tracy Carbasho

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