The Chemistry Department in the Eberly College of Science, which had been located in seven buildings throughout campus, needed to be consolidated. The Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences resided in a biotechnology building, with its researchers coming from a number of departments scattered throughout the University.

The nearly $97-million project, one of the largest in the history of the campus, was the result of both a critical need for more space and a philosophical shift in how that space should be assigned.

"When we started looking at the space needs of chemistry and life sciences, we had an interesting revelation," says Lisa Berkey, Penn State's project manager. "One of our main goals was to provide an opportunity to enhance interdisciplinary collaboration."

Chemistry and life sciences make an interesting match. "Life sciences," which began as the Life Sciences Consortium, was conceived from the outset as a progressively interdisciplinary concept, while chemistry is perhaps the most staid scientific pursuit. Their differences are highlighted in the fundamentally dissimilar design strategies employed in each building.

The L-shaped Chemistry Building was designed with two separate wings. The wet wing, which functions as the intense research space, contains most of the department's 200 fume hoods and a heavy concentration of wet lab benches. The other wing, what Berkey refers to as the "stiff wing," is stabilized against vibrations with a specially designed foundation in order to accommodate the NMR suite and laser equipment. Conversely the Life Sciences Building is designed around a concept of specialized research centers on each floor.

The buildings were even funded differently. The Life Sciences Building was funded entirely by the University, employing at-risk construction management. The Chemistry Building was paid for by the state with hard-bid multi-prime construction.

Despite their differences, the pairing resonates with the researchers, says Berkey. One of the chemistry faculty who does neuroscience research is moving into the Life Sciences Building rather than the Chemistry Building.

Two State-of-the-Art Facilities

In order to make the collaboration succeed, the University had to satisfy the needs of each discipline by designing two first-rate science buildings, then devising a way to join them.

The 182,000-gsf Chemistry Building is a research-intensive facility. The basement contains a two-story, 8,000-sf NMR suite and instrument research spaces. The remainder of the basement houses mechanical/electrical equipment, and 4,000-ton chilled water plant which serves both the Chemistry and the Life Sciences Buildings.

The first floor contains administrative office space, research suites, and a 70-person seminar room located off of the main entrance points.

The second floor contains labs and offices, and the third floor is home to the biological chemistry labs, with one six-foot fume hood in the four-person module, and a laminated support zone south of the lab zone. It includes spaces such as cold rooms, instrument rooms, computer rooms, darkrooms, tissue culture areas, and a radio isotope lab.

The fourth floor wet wing houses the synthetic labs, with a traditional concentration of five eight-foot fume hoods, and very rigid structured bench-to-fume-hood design, which was requested by the researchers. The base cabinets underneath the fume hoods house vacuum pumps, 100-degree-Celsius ovens, and chemical storage. The hoods are equipped with air, gas, vacuum, and cold water. A ghost corridor separates the lab zone from the student sit-down built-in areas.

The "stiff wing" of the fourth floor houses instrument labs for vibration- and light-sensitive equipment. The instrument wing labs overlook the courtyard, and therefore reduce the amount of light coming into the labs.

These labs are designed with a mostly open floor plan and contain minimal casework, one fume hood per lab regardless of the size, and an intense overhead utility grid with power, data, and lab services to accommodate the lasers, light tables, and pumps.

The fifth floor contains more labs and offices.

The 157,000-gsf Life Sciences Building houses a 10,000-sf animal research facility in the basement. Above that, on the same level as the Chemistry basement, is the "ground floor," which is below grade on the west side and daylights on the east where the ground slopes. The ground floor contains classroom space and the upper level of a tiered 200-seat auditorium. The auditorium—equipped with state-of-the-art technology, a 32-foot wide projection screen, and fixed continuous writing surfaces with power and data hook-ups—will be used for large science lectures and general classroom instruction.

The first floor houses animal development labs, with neuroscience research on the second floor.

The third floor of the Life Sciences Building has a similar configuration to the Chemistry Building, with a larger equipment zone to accommodate additional areas such as the autoclave rooms, fume hood alcoves, and growth rooms used in toxicology research.

The Life Sciences fourth floor contains the plant sciences center and a rooftop greenhouse, which will provide a space for interdisciplinary research for the resident plant scientists. The lab zone on this floor includes instructional space for students.

Making Connections

The Chemistry and Life Sciences Buildings are more than just the sum of their parts. They were designed to foster collaboration between researchers from a wide variety of disciplines. The most obvious element is the two-story glass and steel connector known as the "gateway to the sciences," which will be used for poster sessions and informal gatherings.

The gateway measures almost 30 feet wide, and is lined with intimate seating spaces to take advantage of the view. There also are three settings of sofas, chairs, and tables within the gateway.

"You can imagine scientists gathering there to talk about their work," says Berkey. "And we will be able to move scientific research from one building to the other through the gateway."

The spaces at either end of the gateway on the third floor were designed to welcome that kind of collaboration. Adjacent to the gateway in the Chemistry Building is a seminar room and a series of conference spaces, in addition to the mass spectrometer suite which serves both of the buildings. Similarly in Life Sciences, the gateway leads to the faculty commons and a small café.

"These activities are all designed to create collaborative opportunities," says Berkey.

Architects also included collaborative work spaces throughout both buildings. In Life Sciences, each floor has a specialized research center with its own conference room. In Chemistry, there might be one-half dozen researchers on a floor. Scattered throughout the Chemistry Building are 15 group resource rooms with long conference tables, book shelves, and white boards.

By Lisa Wesel

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