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Science in the City: The Urban Laboratory Building
Chris Leary and Jeff
Salocks, The Stubbins Associates
With attention to the issues of green laboratory design focused
on energy efficiency, one of the most often overlooked opportunities
for developing sustainable laboratory buildings begins with selecting
an appropriate building location. Urban laboratory buildings demonstrate
many environmental benefits including revitalizing underutilized,
and often contaminated former industrial sites, adaptive reuse of
underutilized buildings, convenient access to public transportation,
efficiencies of centralized utilities, and compact and walkable
communities. However, urban laboratory buildings are also challenging
design problems requiring unique solutions including real estate
development pressures, regulatory processes, neighborhood concerns,
utility infrastructure, safety and high-rise construction, security,
and service access. This presentation will demonstrate, with a discussion
of issues and case studies, that urban laboratory buildings offer
advantageous opportunities for research with less toll on the environment.
Case studies will include a new global research headquarters for
an international pharmaceutical company, a speculative laboratory
building development, and a master plan for extending the campus
of a major urban medical school.
Findings:
This presentation will communicate the following lessons learned
and gathered data (with issues and case studies):
- Energy consumed by, and environmental impact of, a laboratory
building,
- Energy consumed by, and environmental impact of, commuting to
a lab building,
- Issues associated with building on a previously 'disturbed'
site,
- Issues associated with a 'high-rise' laboratory building,
- Benefits of working in an urban community,
- Benefits and challenges of connecting to an existing utility
infrastructure,
- Regulatory and neighborhood challenges and solutions,
- Urban security and service access challenges and solutions.
Labs21 Connection:
The topic of "urban laboratory buildings" expands the
considerations of an environmentally sustainable laboratory building
far beyond the usual the narrowly-focused individual building criteria
of energy consumption, pollution and construction materials. Many
well intentioned buildings successfully address these green building
technologies while ignoring larger scale negative environmental
impact from inefficient land use planning, suburban sprawl, habitat
destruction and pollution from automobile-dependant transportation.
Developing laboratory buildings in urban environments offers many
opportunities to consider the environmental impact of the building
in a larger regional context. However, urban buildings also present
certain challenges, all of which can be overcome. This presentation
will identify and quantify the environmental opportunities of urban
laboratory development, and also identify challenges and solutions.
Biographies:
Chris Leary has led design teams for many of the firm's
large-scale urban projects since joining The Stubbins Associates
in 1992, including laboratory and research facilities for the Novartis
Institute for Biomedical Research, Boston University Medical Center
and Vanderbilt University Medical Center. His particular interest
is in the area of Building Performance and Sustainable Design. Chris
is a LEED™ 2.0 Accredited professional, and is currently working
on several LEED™ registered projects. He is an experienced
speaker on the subject, and has participated in several conferences
including SCUP and Laboratories for the 21st Century. In addition,
he is the Director of the Stubbins Associates High-Performance Green
Building Design Group.
Jeff Salocks has over 20 years of experience as an architect
and designer specializing in the programming, planning and design
of laboratory and research facilities for universities, institutional,
healthcare and corporate clients. At present he is the Director
of Laboratory and Research Facilities at The Stubbins Associates
in Cambridge Massachusetts and has recently designed new research
facilities for the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research and
Elixir Pharmaceuticals. He has also programmed and/or designed new
laboratory facilities for academic institutions such as Brown University
and Dartmouth College. Mr. Salocks holds a BArch degree from Pratt
Institute and is a member of the American Institute of Architects.
He speaks frequently on the subject of laboratory design for such
national organizations as SCUP, Project Kaleidoscope, National Council
of Research Administrators and Society of Research Administrators.
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