Lab Design

The low-rise, terraced laboratory, or “landscape,” building emerges gracefully from a hillside and looks across a lake. Its design maximizes interaction between scientists, a key aspect of HHMI's design philosophy.

The landscape building is some 900 feet long and 270 feet deep at the ground floor. In spite of its size, the building blends into the surrounding site. It is stepped up the hill, giving each floor access to landscaped outdoor spaces. The ground floor has meeting, food service, administrative, service, and vibration- and height-sensitive support spaces. The two upper floors are devoted to research space. Major stairs are located at third points along the building length, and other stairs are at the ends of the structure. Horizontal public circulation generally occurs at the building exterior, and service circulation is located inboard.

The primary function of the landscape building is to support the research enterprise. The laboratory floors have similar plans, with a clear organization of office, lab, support, and interaction spaces. The building corridor is at the exterior of the building. The office clusters are on the outside of the corridor, and lab and support space are on the inside of the corridor.

• OFFICE CLUSTER AND INTERACTION SPACES

  The office cluster has six offices organized around a center workspace with an end meeting space. The office clusters are designed to house several research groups, and the occupancy of the office clusters can be increased or decreased by changing the furnishings. The separation of the offices from the labs allows them to have a simpler construction and operable windows.

  The office clusters are located as close as possible to the lab spaces without being located in the laboratory zone, offering a very close relationship between the offices and the lab spaces. The entry to the office clusters has doors to the landscaped rooftop courts. Pantry or copy/mail spaces are located across the corridor from the office clusters and serve as common work and gathering places. These spaces are also directly adjacent to the lab entries.

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  OPEN LABS

  The lab spaces are predominately eight modules wide with removable benchwork systems in the center and fixed sinks and fume hoods on the inside wall. Labs with smaller numbers of modules are located near the stairs and at the ends of the building. The island lab benches are flexible and removable. All the service functions—electrical, communications, and vacuum—are accessible from floor-mounted bollards. A laboratory could be reconfigured from one function to another in a matter of hours and without the need for plumbers, carpenters, or electricians. The diagram shows about one-quarter of a research floor in which the lab has been configured in three ways. The labs can also accommodate other arrangements.

  In the biochemistry plan, desk spaces are located at the window side of the lab, giving the sit-down spaces exterior views and creating an office-type zone at the edge of the lab. While this is the original design intent, the benches of the labs can be easily adjusted to locate sit-down and stand-up workstations anywhere along the bench length. Special attention has been given to lighting and mechanical noise, so the spaces can function well in either a lab or office type use.

• SUPPORT SPACE AND EQUIPMENT CORRIDOR

  The support zone is directly behind the lab spaces. It is 22 feet deep, allowing it to be divided in half if needed. The blocks of support space are approximately 50 feet long and are separated by cross-corridors that give access to the 9-foot-wide equipment and service corridor behind the support zone. The support zone is highly serviced and highly flexible. It can accommodate a wide variety of lab equipment or specialized needs.

  The second floor has additional support space, located behind the equipment corridor. This arrangement allows some users direct access to functions that would be remotely located in a more traditional building. The third floor has parking located behind the equipment corridor. Other more unusual support space is located on the ground floor with direct access to the loading dock. This space has 37-foot-high ceilings and is less subject to vibration.