Latest Reports

With three research floors and a prime location within the chemistry complex at Yale University, the 70,000-sf Kline Chemistry building has the highest lab and fume hood density on campus. In renovating the 50-year-old building, the mission was to modernize the lab space while significantly improving building efficiency. In addition to a new building envelope and HVAC systems, conservation strategies include more efficient fume hood use, reduced air changes and power watt densities, minimized outside air and reheat, occupancy controls, and hood proximity sensors. As a result of these efforts, the building is projected to achieve a 30 percent energy cost savings for LEED, and to consume 35 percent less energy than other Yale laboratories. When reductions in fume hood outdoor air demand are included, cost savings are projected to be up to $500,000 beyond those in a typical code-compliant laboratory in this climate zone.

Funded by a grant from National Institutes of Health, The Ohio State University renovated Goss Laboratory to create an open lab concept in a 1961 building, where the researchers’ labs previously were isolated from each other. The intent was to promote visibility and teamwork in the field of veterinary infectious disease research. The new design features flexible lab bays lit with natural light, four BSL-2 tissue culture labs, a BSL-2 dedicated rodent phenotyping and infectious necropsy laboratory, equipment rooms, and an open office workspace for graduate student collaboration.

The strategic use of specialized doors and biocontainment cubicles in Weill Cornell Medical College’s new academic research facility maximizes flexibility by allowing the floor plan to be easily reconfigured for different levels of containment and program size.

A new 650,000-sf, $295 million complex in Portland, Oregon, consists of the 12-story Skourtes Tower and five-story Collaborative Life Sciences Building (CLSB), which are connected by an atrium nicknamed the “mixing bowl” because it brings everyone together in a central location. The complex supports an interprofessional, multi-institutional program for medicine, nursing, allied health, dentistry, and undergraduate sciences, as well as pure research.

London’s King’s College has tapped building information systems and financial data to maximize the use of space while reducing energy costs and carbon emissions by employing three strategies: leveraging shareable and flexible space, challenging assumptions about the need for individual offices, and having leaders set progressive examples for other staff. Efficiently planned and utilized spaces are inextricably linked with sustainability for growing academic institutions like King’s College, especially when the cost of property is expensive, according to architect and planner Ian Caldwell.