Latest Reports

The Francis Crick Institute (informally known as “the Crick”) is one of the world’s largest dedicated biomedical research centers. Its formal agenda is “to discover the basic biology underlying human health, improving the treatment, diagnosis, and prevention of disease, and generating economic opportunities for the UK.” Achieving this agenda has required some unusual architectural strategies, centered on the notion of “discovery without boundaries”—boundaries between scientific disciplines, institutions, laboratories, and individual researchers—which lies at the heart of the Crick’s culture.

Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General) in Boston is developing new methods and metrics for accurately analyzing space use data to determine how efficiently scientists utilize expensive research space. The new approach helps administrators use objective, defensible data to properly distribute limited, high-value space and resources. By leveraging the extensive data available in its custom relational database, the Research Space Management Group (RSMG) can track all research space, as well as the various types of research programs assigned to that space, including on-site, off-site, laboratory, and support spaces.

Chicago’s newly opened Shirley Ryan AbilityLab is the world’s first translational research hospital where scientists, engineers, technologists, and clinicians work collaboratively with thousands of patients going through intensive post-traumatic and disease-related functional rehabilitation. This unique integrated model dramatically shortens the amount of time between research innovations and practical clinical applications.

1. Space Planning and Management Software for the 21st Century Workplace
2. Rodent Cage Technology Evolves Beyond the Simple Holding Vessel
3. The Future of Space is Flexible and People Focused
4. Centralized Research Support Facility Reaping Significant Benefits
5. Eli Lilly Employs Shared Space and Innovative Infrastructure 
6. The Gold Standard of Maker Space at MIT
7. The Future of Research Facility Design
8. Virtual and Augmented Reality are Reinventing Medical Education
9. Unique Survey Tools that Inform Design and Utilization of Academic Medical Campuses
10. Superlabs Drive Collaboration, Flexibility, and Space Efficiency in Academic Sciences

Engineered openings that minimize the turbulence of transfer airflow, along with a mix of control strategies between labs and anchor spaces, are a best practice for achieving stable pressurization in biocontainment facilities. “The golden rule of containment is to always maintain the relationship between exhaust and supply,” says Michael Clements, director of life sciences at WorkingBuildings, LLC. “To keep a room contained, airflow fluctuations in the exhaust require a reaction in the supply in order to maintain this critical relationship.”