Construction is just getting under way on the $52-million project. The building is expected to be completed in 2009, and occupied in the fall semester.

“A lot of people talk in acres,” says John DeSantis, director of technical services and special projects for NYU. “We talk in square feet and sometimes square inches. Space is a premium for us.”

NYU started with three separate six-story buildings, connected internally with massive sliding steel doors, on property measuring only 82 feet deep by 92 feet wide. NYU’s vision was to create a highly collaborative facility for 12 to 14 principle investigators by building on the lessons learned during years of designing scientific research spaces: judicious juggling of program needs, intelligent metrics, and inventive multi-function spaces; minimizing space-wasting designated corridors; utilizing corridors as program space; and installing laboratory casework that is flexible and mobile to keep future options open. Even using those tools, however, would not provide the space they needed for the Center.

The biggest problem was the eight- to 10-foot ceiling heights in the existing buildings, which was six feet less than they needed from floor to floor. The only solution was to demolish the buildings and start from scratch, but that was easier said than done. First, they were located in a historic neighborhood, half a block from a designated historic district. While the buildings themselves did not fall under the domain of the historic district commission, NYU is mindful of the need to maintain the character of the neighborhood, so razing the façades was not an option.

Second, new buildings fall under the more restrictive regulations of modern zoning codes, which are very different than they were when the existing buildings were constructed.

Current zoning regulations require 20 feet of setback from the front and rear lot lines. On this lot, that would allow a new building that is only 62 feet deep. The original buildings, however, are 70 feet deep, and with space this tight, the extra 8 feet are crucial, says DeSantis. Zoning also limits the street wall to 60 feet high in order to minimize the shadow the building casts on the street. Above that, the façade must slope back.

These restrictions would seem to make it impossible for NYU to demolish the old buildings, but NYU worked with city regulators and the community to innovate within the building code.

The city considers a reconstruction project a grandfathered “renovation” as long as 25 percent of the original building is retained. In order to fall into that category, NYU demolished the building in phases, 75 percent in the first phase, and the remaining 25 percent later. Several historic columns and the façades will remain from the original buildings.

If NYU were building what the city considers a “new” structure, the sloping wall would have cut into the fifth and sixth floors, further shrinking the already small floorplate. Grandfathering allowed the University to rebuild six full floors, then recess two new upper floors and the mechanical space in order to comply.

The University also was able to gain additional space by digging a subcellar, because sub grade or cellars and mechanical spaces do not count toward the maximum allowable floor area ratio. The new structure will contain eight floors of program space above ground, two basement levels, and two mechanical floors on top.

“We have a group that’s dedicated just to working with the city,” says DeSantis. “They meet with the commissioner and the fire department.  They get to know each other. We try to do everything they ask. That builds up a trust, and they allow us to do an awful lot because they know we will stay within the code.”

“There are many meetings with the neighbors, too,” adds Charles Kirby, an architect and a principal with Einhorn Yaffee Prescott Architecture & Engineering. “A major design criteria for the Center for Genomics & Systems Biology is consideration of the community and NYU’s residential neighbors. This was manifested in sensitive treatment of the building massing, selection of materials to be in harmony with the surrounding buildings, minimizing noise and light pollution, and maintaining a sidewalk experience for streetscape continuity.  We have a lot of meetings with the neighbors to explain what’s going on, to listen to them, and to deal with their concerns to the extent we can.”

Make a Little Space Go a Long Way

Some elements of the building worked in NYU’s favor. The building borrows chilled water, hot water, and steam from the campus loop system, obviating the need for cooling towers, chillers, and pumps. The only mechanical systems the building needs are air handlers. Because space is so precious in the building, there wasn’t room for multiple duct shafts, so the offices and the wet labs share the same air handling system. In addition, because the footprint is so small, the duct runs are short, which allows the ducts to be shallower and take up less ceiling height. Two air handling units, stacked one on top of the other, are at the top of the building where the sloping façade has shrunken the floorplates to their smallest size.

With the building’s dimensions stretched as far as they could be, the architects then turned to utilizing the interior space as efficiently as possible, including wet labs, bio-informatics labs, classrooms, offices, a rooftop greenhouse, and an environmental growth chamber with a placeholder for an aquarium in the subcellar.

“NYU likes to work with groups of four principal investigators,” explains Kirby. “We didn’t have enough square footage on a floor for four principal investigators, but we did have enough if we put in suites of two floors.”

Because the floorplate is so small, the spaces are aligned vertically rather than horizontally, with an open internal staircase. Even the benches are shorter than the standard 11 feet.

“NYU has learned that if you squeeze a little bit and are clever with the design, it still works,” says DeSantis.

The wet labs for the experimentalists are concentrated in the center of the floorplate, separated from the theorists’ computer labs by a glass wall, giving the illusion of a bigger space.

“The feeling when you’re in the lab is openness,” says DeSantis. “You’re not looking at a wall. You’re looking beyond what would have been a wall into a space that now has both experimentalists and theorists working together, creating a science facility that is more interactive.”

Offices and shared spaces such as conference rooms line the perimeter of the floor. The only designated corridor takes up barely one-third of one exterior wall.

“People were willing to work in slightly tighter spaces in order to get their whole group together on two floors in a suite,” adds Kirby. “They worked with us as much as we worked with them to get everybody in this compact area because they love the idea of the theorists and the experimentalists together working side by side. They bought the concept and really worked with us to make it happen.”

By Lisa Wesel

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