Four Projects Illustrate the Benefits and Variations of a Communal Services Scheme
Centralizing support services in a research facility saves both capital and operating costs. Over the 30-year life span of a 50,000-gsf research building, the lion's share of spending is consumed not by construction, equipment, or operating costs--but by personnel. The staffing tab is more than just significant; it can account for 90 percent or more of the total life cycle cost, according to architect Ken Kornberg, president of Kornberg Associates, Menlo Park, Calif.

An impressively equipped research center is slowly taking shape at the edge of the rain forest on a ridge 90 meters above a protected Okinawan beach. The stunning physical surroundings are just one sign of the warm welcome the Japanese Ministry of Science and Technology will hold out to the leading investigators who join its campaign to propel the nation's basic science research into the world-class arena.

Design Impacted by Interaction, Core Facilities, Building Codes, and Sustainability
Interdisciplinary research programs and multidisciplinary teaching models are significantly impacting the design of science buildings. Gone are the days when science buildings were purposely designed to isolate researchers from varying disciplines in their own laboratories. The nature of today's scientific research demands buildings specifically designed to enhance interaction among multiple disciplines working in flexible laboratories with sophisticated, high-tech equipment.

Pre-Planning and Good Communication Key to Managing Complicated Logistics
Two-thirds of the way through a major, three-year renovation and expansion of its Applied Science Building (ASB), Saint Mary's University (SMU) in Nova Scotia has learned valuable lessons about working on a major academic building while conducting laboratory classes and research inside. SMU offers proof such projects can be done, but there are key points to consider.

Analytical Systems for Upgrading Lab Facilities at Lower Costs
For many universities and private organizations the need to upgrade or expand facilities to meet growing research demands is often challenged by the condition of aging buildings, existing infrastructure, and limited budget. Campuses are generally congested and there are a limited number of sites available for new construction. Land acquisition, permitting, and site development all have significant associated costs, and demolition of existing facilities may require the temporary shutdown of research activities. These factors, coupled with the escalating costs of raw materials, can make renovation the most efficient, economically sensible solution when compared with rebuilding.

Green Design Strategies Enhance Quality and Reduce Costs
Many innovative design strategies are emerging from the broad and diverse sustainable design agenda that are appropriate to laboratory buildings. Of these, improvements to building systems that provide ventilation, conditioning, and lighting represent the largest area of opportunity. These systems drive energy use and operating costs. They consume the lion's share of first cost investment while also having a profound impact on comfort, well-being, and productivity. Conventional practice would relegate these issues to engineers to solve after key architectural and planning decisions have already been made, but smart sustainable design solutions can emerge when architecture, space planning, and engineering systems are conceived together.

Feedback from the users is essential to gauging the effectiveness of design strategies. HOK recently engaged in a three-part, post-occupancy evaluation study to learn how occupants were responding to their completed laboratory buildings, and to see if design goals established at the outset of the projects were being realized. The evaluation method included an energy evaluation, user interviews and the use of the Center for the Built Environment's (CBE) Occupant Satisfaction Survey.

SmithGroup Refines Space Efficiency for LEED-Certified Facilities
Building environmentally sustainable research facilities can be an excellent long-term investment for both the environment and the bottom line, but they can also come with higher initial costs. One successful approach to creating sustainable labs under a fixed budget without compromising science programs is to reassess conventional sizing guidelines for research space and mechanical support systems. SmithGroup Inc. successfully applied this approach in the development of two recent sustainable projects: the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in Berkeley, Calif., and the Science + Technology Facility at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colo. Considered together, the projects reveal how an informed collaborative approach to considering space and mechanical needs can result in significant savings for environmentally sustainable facilities.

University Invests $53 Million to Address Research Needs
The McGill University Life Sciences Research Complex (MULSRC) in Montreal is intended to serve as a nucleus for biomedical research by fostering interaction between scientists working in four buildings. Two of the existing facilities, the Faculty of Medicine's McIntyre Building and the Science Faculty's Stewart Building, have been located next to each other for three decades without any practical means for the scientists to share equipment or to collaborate on research.

Building Designed to be Accessible, Flexible, and Usable
A driving force in medical research is the desire to create "translational research centers"--ones where the basic research begins, is developed, tested, and eventually used to treat patients, all within the same building. That hasn't always been the norm.

Tanker Explosion Collapses Section of California Freeway
The images were horrifying. A gasoline tanker truck exploding into a fireball. A freeway connector ramp collapsing into a cloud of flames and hot cinders. More than 160 feet of roadway completely missing from the upper deck. Twisted, fire-blackened girders on the lower deck.

Funding Shifts Drive a New Model for Research Buildings
Needs for laboratory space fluctuate like any real estate product. From generic open labs to increasingly specialized spaces; from interdisciplinary buildings to transdisciplinary collaboratories; from basic research labs to translational facilities. Each new trend builds on the lessons of the past.

Flexible Casework and Delayed Fitout are Key Strategies
Although flexible and adaptable features can increase a laboratory's first cost, they can save money in the long run--a savings that increases with every subsequent renovation. Flexible design is particularly apropos in multidisciplinary research facilities, where researchers may be performing research in areas ranging from organic chemistry to engineering and physics, and where a continual influx of new equipment and instruments has blurred the traditional distinction between lab space and lab support space and required that labs at least incorporate enough flexibility to accommodate the new technologies.