Space Use

Space allocation can be a political minefield, but Stony Brook University School of Medicine (SBM) is changing that paradigm. Old-style backroom negotiations are being replaced with a wholly transparent decision-making approach that utilizes information technology to democratize space allocation and provide department chairs with an unprecedented wealth of information about their space and staffing, past, present, and future.

The University of Saskatchewan has renovated and modernized its health sciences education and research facilities to accommodate shared operations, space, and technology, using change management strategies to help faculty, staff, and students move from silos to a team-based model. The transformation incorporates institutional, as well as physical, changes, including restructuring established administrative processes and hierarchies.

After successfully launching FLEXplace—a dynamic initiative to increase employee well-being and business productivity—Johnson & Johnson further refined its activity-based planning approach and rebranded it as the “Workplace Innovation Program.” The revised program further establishes design and operating guidelines for creating collaborative and personal work environments for a wide variety of business functions in different locations and cultures around the world.

Even with large expanses of cubicles, the workplace environment at Intel’s new RA4, a seven-story office/factory building in Hillsboro, Ore., sports a fresh, contemporary look carefully calibrated to support the recruitment and retention of top employee talent. A combination of collaboration spaces and amenities, such as a 36,000-sf cafeteria that offers half a dozen different types of cuisine, along with an abundance of natural light and outdoor views, has produced a building that earns approval across the four employee generations that occupy the facility.

The Pirbright Institute’s Plowright Building represents a visionary new model for biocontainment lab design that includes offices, conference areas, an atrium, and a cafeteria all within the containment zone, so researchers don’t need to shower in and out multiple times a day. This inverts the traditional approach to biocontainment design by putting people at the center and lab spaces at the perimeter. Researchers enter the building starting in a centralized non-containment zone and work their way toward the perimeter throughout the day, in a one-way flow.

The new Vicki Sara Building on the urban campus of the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, includes a massive “Super Lab”—a single open floor plate of more than 8,600 sf that serves 220 students in any configuration up to a maximum of 12 separate classes simultaneously. From 2,500 to 3,000 students, over several sessions a day, pass through the lab each week. Powered by IT integration, the Sydney facility serves students studying chemistry, biology, cell biology/biochemistry, physics, physiology, and pharmacy compounding.

Other building features include:

Whether personal or professional, change evokes an emotional response. Workplace change initiatives, especially those relating to space, nudge (or jolt) employees out of their comfort zones and typically entail some modification in routine and behavior. Relationships change, as well, and questions arise about how to continue performing at a high level in the new environment. The fastest, most productive change strategies take these human dimensions into account.  

Ford Motor Company will begin construction in May of 2016 on a comprehensive redevelopment of its real estate portfolio in Dearborn, Mich. The project will include construction of a 700,000-sf design facility as well as the expansion and renovation of Ford's existing headquarters campus. Designed by SmithGroupJJR to promote collaboration and interaction, the updated buildings will feature open workspaces with unassigned seating.

Eastman’s new corporate business center models collaborative design in process and form. The 296,000-sf facility, located at the corporate headquarters in Kingsport, Tenn., houses more than 100 shared meeting spaces, with state-of-the art technology, revised workspace designs, and several areas where employees can greet visitors or work away from their desks.

The “Super Lab,” opened in 2015 at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), in Sydney, Australia, can host more than 200 students in up to five different lab classes simultaneously. With several sessions held each day, the Super Lab sees 2,500 to 3,000 student entries per week, a figure that, for a single lab space, is “rather horrifying to academics at first face value,” says Bill Booth, laboratory operations manager at UTS.

In order to increase capacity, improve student/faculty ratios, and boost space utilization by 150 percent, Purdue University’s College of Engineering developed a five-year strategic plan for increasing efficiency and space on the College’s main campus. The plan—which was driven by the need to meet the goal of a 30 percent growth in engineering faculty and staff, along with growth of graduate and undergraduate students—combines a mix of strategies including renovation, portfolio rebalancing, and new construction.

Microvivaria—customized, small-scale animal research environments, built within an existing building or as new construction—are a good option when research needs dictate a smaller, more focused facility; when a location is not viable for, or proximate to, a full-scale vivarium; or when speed to uptime is key.

Workspace planners are often asked to design to a 10-to-20-year time horizon, but the more rapidly technology advances, the harder this becomes. And it’s not just the hardware, software, and work tasks that are going to change, says Kay Sargent, director of workplace strategies at Lendlease. It’s also the workers themselves. Science shows that workers’ brains are going to work differently in 20 years, says Sargent, and companies need to start planning for this now, or pay the price.

Research confirms that active and engaging university classrooms improve learning outcomes, but what features produce the most positive—and cost-effective—results? Surprisingly, perhaps, advanced technology is not nearly as high on the list of success factors as whiteboards, flexible furniture, and other space-related amenities.

With many biomedical organizations considering consolidating research equipment into core facilities, “renovate to innovate” should be a guiding principle, according to professionals from DPR Construction and Gensler. The design for a recent renovation undertaken at H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in Tampa, Fla.—the Shared Resource Center—evolved to support the translational research that is Moffitt’s focus, not only by collocating vital instrumentation, but also by building in modularity and providing a literal “window” to view active research.