This is the first in a series of two articles about trends reshaping the way research buildings are designed. This article discusses two of the trends: the ratio of lab to lab support space and the adaptability of lab design and construction. Part II will discuss sustainable design and construction.

Factors fueling today’s design concepts from a user’s standpoint include the desire to have multidisciplinary, interactive research environments, hands-on teaching, and increased knowledge sharing in both corporate and academic settings, all of which can enhance the ability to recruit and retain top scientists, faculty, and students. As a result, buildings are being designed to include larger, more open and collaborative labs with plenty of multi-use space, access to high-tech instrumentation and informatics, along with an abundance of support space.

“We are learning from labs that were designed 10 to 50 years ago. We’re seeing that metrics have changed since then and we’re evaluating how they are influencing facilities design today,” says David Bendet, vice president and director of the Science and Technology Group for Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum (HOK) in San Francisco. “We know things are changing because there is so much renovation occurring in the marketplace today.”

In fact, 75 percent of all research construction involves renovation or adaptation of existing facilities, which is necessary because these facilities no longer meet current use requirements. Drivers of change include new directions in research, growth and expansion, outmoded facilities and infrastructure deficiencies, new research and teaching methods, and advances in scientific equipment. It is now imperative to design buildings that are sustainable, flexible enough to easily accommodate change, and feature specialized lab support space.

Ratio of Lab to Lab Support

The shift to open-lab environments has introduced new challenges that must be addressed to ensure optimal performance. When walls between labs are eliminated to foster flexibility and adaptability, the role of lab support spaces is altered. Open labs place a greater demand on the need for separate, yet adjacent, lab support spaces for loud, heat-generating, fixed equipment, and analytical instrumentation, as well as for processes that are sensitive to vibration or other environmental disturbances. Lab support zones can even facilitate collaboration through the sharing of equipment and services.

“Buildings are trending towards higher efficiencies; we are now targeting over 65 percent efficiency of net to gross in research labs. Plus, we are noticing trends in decreasing amounts of wet labs along with an equivalent increase in the amount of dry labs and lab support spaces,” notes Bendet. “Historically, the amount of lab space has exceeded the amount of support space. The increase in the amount of instrumentation and analytical equipment has generated an increased need for specialized support space, such as computational areas, equipment rooms, hood alcoves, tissue culture suites, environmental rooms, microscopy, and other environments not suitable to the open lab.”

As a result, the ratio of lab to lab support today is typically 1-to-1 and may be as high as 1-to-1.2 (45 percent-to-55 percent), according to Bendet. This ratio varies depending on the type of research, with biosciences requiring the largest amount of support space. The ratio of lab to lab support to office space ideally should be 35 percent-to-35 percent-to-30 percent. Flexibility and adaptability to accommodate inevitable changes in research scope or focus are critical to the long-term viability of a lab. Increasing the ratio and distribution of lab support space is becoming a key design strategy. Lab support spaces for shared equipment need to be designed appropriately and located conveniently for all users.

The ratio of dry lab as compared to wet lab has also increased as a result of the proliferation of computational and analytical work. In 2005, HOK performed a utilization study of Genentech Hall at the University of California, San Francisco, which also has a wet lab to lab support ratio of approximately 1-to-1.2. UCSF had allowed for a 16-percent expansion in the design to facilitate additional recruiting after occupancy. Although overall growth was as expected, UCSF actually experienced less than 10-percent expansion in the wet lab and lab support areas, while at the same time more than 30-percent expansion in the dry office and computational spaces.

This trend toward increased dry lab and computational space is consistent with experience throughout the industry. Although the ratio of dry labs to wet labs needs to be evaluated on a project-by-project basis, depending on use and an appropriate strategy for flexibility in the distribution of lab utilities. With the trend toward increasing the amount of dry labs, it does not always make sense to install wet utilities at all bench locations if the area is eventually used as computational space.

Challenges of Open Labs

Open labs foster collaboration in quality environments that offer good working conditions and the ability to support new scientific equipment and instrumentation. However, they also present challenges pertaining to ownership, privacy, and acoustics—issues that must be balanced with the need to enhance efficiency and usefulness of the labs.

“A collaborative approach to programming research facilities, involving all stakeholders, is beneficial to determine if there are real or only perceived issues related to ownership, privacy, security, and acoustics,” says Bendet. “Additionally, programming should be used to establish design goals and an appropriate balance of ‘goals’ vs. ‘wants’ vs. ‘needs.’ Users may identify the highest priorities as privacy, ownership, and customization, while lab directors may identify the highest priorities as efficiency, openness, and collaboration.”

For example, each floor at UCSF’s Genentech Hall is organized into four neighborhoods that provide maximum flexibility of open research labs, offices, and lab support. Genentech Hall has a higher percentage of shared space than other similar facilities, making it very collaborative space. UCSF used collaborative programming to define the requirements for shared space by establishing an allowance of $50,000 per principal investigator (PI) to help facilitate improvements. As researchers looked for ways to stretch their allowance, they opted for shared spaces to maximize the use of equipment and reduce duplication of support facilities, which ultimately promoted collaboration.

Acoustical issues can be solved in open labs through appropriate design and analysis. For instance, support alcoves are helpful for removing heat- and noise-producing equipment from the open lab. Since most of the walls and floor surfaces are typically hard and reverberant, it is important to pay attention to the design of ceilings. HOK typically recommends 10-foot ceiling heights, selection of acoustically absorbent materials, and sloped ceiling surfaces. Equally important is the design of ventilation systems, including the use of sound attenuators in ductwork, and limiting duct velocities to below 2,000 feet per minute (fpm) for main ducts and 1,400 fpm for branch ducts.

Concerns related to internal security may be physical or operational. For instance, physical security may be a required stipulation to perform a grant-funded research project or to isolate a highly sensitive function. On the other hand, security may be only an operational or procedural issue related to interdepartmental funding or protection of intellectual property, which can typically be addressed through regulations, sharing agreements among users, or by simply using passwords on computers and locks on cabinets and drawers.

Physical room separation may also be needed for fire separation, pressurization, containment, isolation, or the use of hazardous materials. When discussing the requirements for physical separation, Bendet recommends asking the question: “Why is a wall necessary?”

Achieving Flexibility and Usefulness

The rapid pace of discovery and the ongoing introduction of new technology make it necessary to have the proper infrastructure and information technology support systems to accommodate the most modern equipment in open labs. These labs provide an ideal environment for the integration of new technologies, networked analytical instruments, mobile devices, laptop computers, wireless connectivity, digital projection, as well as multimedia and audio-visual technology.

Flexibility and usefulness are achieved in open labs by using a modular design with moveable casework, plug-and-play infrastructure, overhead utilities distribution, and provisions for fixed elements. The openness of a lab depends on culture, not function. An open lab can include as few as three modules, as many as 12, or even more. The number is typically contingent upon how willing users are to share space and how comfortable they are in a large, open environment.

Lab modules have increased in size from 10 feet wide and 24 feet deep in the 1960s up to 11 feet, six inches wide by more than 50 feet deep today, including adjacent lab support. The larger module width is the result of trying to accommodate a greater amount of instrumentation and analytical equipment being used by researchers at the bench. The module depth has increased to provide additional bench positions per module, adjacent lab support space, and equipment alcoves.

“We are trying to balance the flexibility requirements for equipment that tend to drive the module size up with the cost pressures that want to drive the module size down,” notes Bendet.

Space Utilization

Many universities are facing the need to renovate teaching labs to support new hands-on teaching methods, renovate research labs to support new equipment, increase utilization of existing spaces, consolidate science departments that have grown incrementally over time, and ensure that hazardous uses have proper separation from dry classrooms and other public areas.

“Most academic institutions are finding that they do not have enough classroom and teaching lab space,” says Bendet. “Over time, teaching labs are squeezed into areas that were not designed for teaching or they are not growing in a consolidated way. We continue to pursue new ways of creating order with campus renovation projects through detailed master planning and utilization analysis. Often, we find their needs are fulfilled with additional fixed classrooms, open teaching and research facilities that allow for higher efficiency and shared equipment, along with a combination of smaller spaces for private hands-on teaching.”

Making the best use of labs and their equipment requires attention to space allocation by using one of two strategies. The first is to allocate space based on specific room requirements, which can be determined through programming of a detailed space and area summary, including a calculation of anticipated headcount. The second is to allocate space based on metrics derived from the number of researchers or faculty and the use of ideal space ratios.

In the corporate open research lab, space is now commonly assigned by allocating an equivalent linear foot (ELF) of bench space per PI rather than assigning a square footage allocation to each person working in the lab. It is called an equivalent measurement since the linear footage includes not only the dedicated bench and desk, but also a portion of all shared bench space for equipment, sinks, and storage.

Each PI is assigned a number of researchers and equivalent bench positions (BP) based on his or her level of research funding or need. Each BP includes a write-up desk, a lab bench, and shared bench space within and adjacent to the open lab. The typical amount of bench space per BP within the open lab is between 12 and 20 ELF. Additional support bench space outside the lab zone typically ranges from eight to 12 ELF, resulting in a total of between 20 and 32 ELF of lab and support bench space per person.

For cost reasons, there has been increasing pressure to minimize the size of the open lab zone by locating non-lab functions, such as personal workspace, team space, and break areas, outside the lab zone, thereby decreasing the amount of ventilation, energy use, and ultimately first capital costs as well as long-term operational costs. The migration of space to the non-lab zone requires meticulous planning to make sure that adjacencies are maintained and travel distance between the desk and the lab is kept to a minimum.

“As we create more efficient, flexible, open labs, we must simultaneously provide adequate accommodations for the support zones and workstations we’ve moved out of those open labs,” says Bendet. “Therefore, it is imperative that we carefully evaluate the relationships and adjacencies of the labs to the support zones and to the offices on every project.”

Using Support and Core Labs

Improving efficiency in the modern research lab is being achieved today not only with large open spaces, flexible casework, and by removing fixed equipment from the lab, but also through other innovative design strategies. A recent trend in research facilities is the use of linear equipment rooms (LER). An LER is essentially an extra-wide (12 feet preferred) hallway for circulation that serves the dual purpose of providing storage space for equipment, including refrigerators, freezers, incubators, centrifuges, or other shared equipment that would otherwise limit the flexibility of the lab space. Care must be taken to ensure that adequate power, utilities, and ventilation are provided in the LER and, although circulation does occur through the LER, that a separate code-required means of egress is also provided.

Core labs differ from support labs in that they accommodate highly specialized spaces with sensitive equipment or tools, including imaging facilities, biocontainment labs, cleanrooms, nano and micro-fabrication facilities, vivaria, and hazardous materials storage rooms. These labs have demanding physical design requirements calling for vibration mitigation, electromagnetic and radiofrequency interference isolation, enhanced security, increased structural loads, increased floor-to-floor height to accommodate large equipment and ventilation, high containment, temperature stability, dedicated ventilation systems with HEPA filtration, and environmental monitoring to comply with the current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) regulations.

“Due to their unique and highly specialized design requirements, core labs typically come at a cost premium. It is not surprising that core lab costs may be in the range of $600 to $1,000 per square foot, depending on type of facility and location. These costs can increase in the renovation of a facility that wasn’t designed to accommodate highly specialized core labs, based on the level of systems controls and technology implemented, MEP system design, desired redundancy, and more,” says Bendet. “Additionally, with science and equipment changing so quickly, the real challenge comes in defining adequate, yet appropriate, facilities that are affordable today, not over-designed, yet support the changing needs in the future. We spend considerable time during the programming and conceptual design phases of our projects advising clients through the definition of an appropriate balance between design, cost, and flexibility.”

In Pleasanton, Calif., the Clorox Technology Center renovation project demonstrates the changing needs of a corporate facility over time to support new products. Specific functional adjacency inefficiencies resulted from work groups that continued to grow and change over time in response to ever-changing product development priorities. This resulted in dispersion of researchers within the same product group, as well as compromised adjacencies of product groups to the necessary core and support areas.

In order to phase the construction over time and minimize disruption, HOK recommended immediate solutions for high-priority areas, mid-range solutions for anticipated growth, and master planning ideas to implement long-term corporate goals.

Immediate solutions included retrofitting a small group of underutilized labs with new flexible casework and equipment to support new products in development. Mid-range solutions included creating neighborhoods of departmental space to facilitate interaction, creating modular flexible labs with shared support, converting isolated enclosed offices into larger open collaborative workplaces with more open office areas to support a growing population, and providing more openness with better access to natural daylight.

Long-term solutions proposed include creating new employee amenity spaces, such as a new fitness center and renovations to the existing cafeteria, increasing the amount of meeting space, a branding plan to communicate the company’s identity, improving the building’s circulation system with simplified way finding, and sustainable design strategies to reduce energy use and operating costs.

“We evaluated opportunities to implement strategies for enhancing space utilization, creating better adjacencies within product development groups and support facilities, bringing in natural daylight to enhance employee satisfaction, and providing additional flexibility to increase efficiency and use of their space well into the future,” says Bendet.

By Tracy Carbasho

We welcome your Questions and Comments

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