The AFVRL facility, located in the Saratoga Technology + Energy Park, will be used to measure emissions of both conventional and alternative propulsion fuel systems in a wide range of vehicles in order to develop objective governmental policy. Advanced cleantech design features of the facility include site specific geothermal heating and cooling, energy recovery wheels to offset high outside air-quantity requirements, and a unique system that allows for supplemental electrical regeneration via the powerful AC dynamometers used in engine and vehicle test cells at the site.

“It is only fitting that a facility designed to study efficient fuel utilization and cleaner energy technologies also respect the environment as much as possible. Functional performance is essential, but so is the need to ‘walk the talk’ by developing the site sensitively, minimizing nonrenewable energy consumption, and creating an intellectually stimulating environment where people meet, collaborate, and come up with new ideas for solving complex problems,” says Joseph Ostafi of Flad & Associates, the senior design architect for the New York State Alternate Fuel Vehicle Research Laboratory.

The AFVRL, currently in final design, is organized by programmatic function and designed to facilitate the research of a wide range of vehicle and engine types. The building’s design parameters included the need to accommodate the turning radius of a New York City articulating transit bus inside the building. The facility is also required to be operationally accessible to other government agencies, authorities, and industry groups for the purpose of collaborative research.

Regional Response

Ostafi notes that the alternative energy research industry has generated a very regionalized response. Many east coast organizations focus on transportation and energy efficiency. Around the Detroit area there is an understandable focus on the automotive and engine industries. In the Midwest, tractor and farming industries are researching how to adapt engines to biomass fuel technologies that are driven by completely different global economies.

Regardless of the regional or strategic approach, alternative energy research facilities share a common requirement for flexible, cutting-edge collaborative space.

“This is a very multidisciplinary industry and that has a significant impact on design. Emissions research involves applied sciences and chemistry, biomass is a combination of heavy engineering and biology, and energy transmission is a blend of material science and nanotechnology. So these facilities need to be able to support a multitude of different activities,” says Ostafi.

Facility designers are incorporating features that increase interaction between disciplines. These measures include focusing on things like strategic department adjacencies, integration of research tools and space, and increased transparency.

“We know that things like transparency are successful for getting people to communicate. Being able to see an experiment or make eye contact with other researchers is a great start. However, there are many other design features that help create innovation-driving collaborative environments,” says Ostafi.

Designing for Collaboration

Flad & Associates recently conducted a series of studies to determine which design elements are best for facilitating collaboration and found that one of the most important factors is getting people to cross paths who normally wouldn’t do so. According to Flad’s study, this interaction is significantly increased in spaces where there is food or drink available. As a result, these types of facilities are incorporating more coffee bars, alcoves, and casual conversation areas.

“In the AFVRL we pinpointed the main staircase as one area in the building where everyone is going to cross paths at some point in the day. So we made that staircase extraordinarily wide and gave it a couple extra landings so that it can support informal conversations,” says Ostafi.

One of the keys to supporting collaboration is understanding the culture and circulation paths of the people involved.

“You want to figure out where in the building opportunities for spontaneous interaction between people can be exploited or celebrated,” he says.

Transparency vs. Security

While transparency is recognized as an important collaborative factor, it also raises security and safety concerns. One of the challenges in the automotive industry is to balance confidentiality concerns with the need to collaborate with private sector experts who frequently work for a company’s industry competitors.

“Security in an environment of high-level collaboration is a significant issue. It’s important to be able to bring outside experts into the facility so they can consult on new technologies without letting them in so far that they can see everything else that’s going on,” says Ostafi.

This challenges designers to come up with more innovative ways to make labs transparent while addressing security and safety issues. As a result, floor plans are shifting towards clear cut segregation of office and research space.

“The best way we’ve found to create transparency is to separate labs from office spaces because offices have a more human scale and an inherent ability to become more transparent. So we’ve been seeing a trend towards taking all the offices and amenities out of the lab and turning them into more glassy open environments,” says Ostafi.

According to Ostafi, there is a strong drive for immediate adjacency between labs and offices, as opposed to placing office space on separate floors or in other parts of the building, which is more prevalent in the academic community.

Flexibility for the Future

The alternative energy research industry is attempting to develop new solutions to significant problems. As a result, the need for flexibility will continue to drive facility design.

“Because these are emerging technologies, we are designing buildings for clients who don’t know exactly where the research is going to lead them. So we start with a core facility that will support a specific type of science and then figure out ways to make it flexible enough that it can be used for other applications down the road,” says Ostafi.

For example, a combustion engine laboratory may be originally designed to test ethanol, but that demand could change in the near future to a significantly different and more hazardous material such as hydrogen, natural gas, or propane.

“What that means from a design standpoint is that we have to create labs that are capable of testing a range of different fuels, each with different building code ramifications,” say Ostafi.

Message in a Mobius Strip

Because it represents a department that supports state environmental policy legislation, it was important that the AFVRL building reflect its mission through architectural design. To invoke the organization’s commitment to scientific sustainability, the roof is built in the shape of a Mobius Strip, a mathematical model used to explain a number of scientific phenomena and the design inspiration for the recycling symbol.

 “The Mobius shape is designed into the AFVRL as a metaphor of its purpose, but it also serves to unite the very complex programmatic forms within the building. These types of labs represent something much bigger than just a building. Many of our clients are expressing that they want the facilities to be at the forefront of science and reflect the story unfolding in the space,” says Ostafi.

By Johnathon Allen