Design for Change—How Does it Affect Sustainability?
Laura Carlson, LEED® AP, Ballinger
Jonathan Friedan, LEED AP, Ballinger
We are frequently challenged by our clients to design laboratories that are not tailored to a specific occupant; clients want to make sure that the buildings they build can accommodate the next waves of hires, not just the current researchers, without major changes to the laboratory. Sometimes the building is designed before all of the researchers are hired.
In this situation, the process is to design a standardized laboratory with a committee comprised of researchers, architects, engineers, and the owner. The challenge is to create a laboratory design that should accommodate a number of different types of research as well as research styles. The solution often includes designing a laboratory utilizing movable casework and flexible services so that the laboratory can be changed once the researcher is on board.
The advantage of using flexible casework and services is that changes made do not need to include traditional demolition and construction that mean waste going to a landfill. Instead, the casework and fume hoods can be moved or re-oriented and "plugged in" to a new location by building facilities or possibly by the research staff themselves. In order to facilitate this, services must be well-planned with appropriate HVAC, normal and emergency power, and piped utilities with pre-planned connection points. This can improve lifecycle efficiency of the building.
At the University of Wisconsin's Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, a standardized laboratory "block" with movable casework and fume hoods was used for the initial construction documents and pricing. After the core and shell was complete, researchers were hired and a second round of laboratory design started. The standard laboratory design was reviewed and customized within accepted parameters to meet their specific needs.
The differences between the standardized laboratory design and the customizations will be discussed. Were there changes outside of the parameters that were construction-related instead of casework changes? Can what we learned from this exercise translate into the expectations for lifecycle efficiency? What are the implications for flexible casework on a building’s infrastructure? Does adding this level of flexibility add significantly to the energy resource use of the building? Additional case studies will be used to show that while flexibility can add cost as well as energy use, the right design of appropriately selected flexible elements can reduce resource use and improve lifecycle efficiency without significantly increasing initial resource use and long term energy use.
Biographies:
Laura Carlson, AIA, LEED AP, a senior project laboratory designer at Ballinger, has been planning and designing laboratories for 21 years. Ms. Carlson’s project experience includes research as well as teaching laboratory commissions for prominent clients such as the University of Wisconsin, Grove City College, Duke University, and pharmaceutical giant, Boehringer Ingelheim. Her work has taken her across the globe—including laboratory design for Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon, Portugal. Ms. Carlson is not only an expert in laboratory design, but is also one of the firm's sustainability resources. Ms. Carlson, a graduate of Syracuse University's School of Architecture, is a past presenter at Labs21 and has been published in R&D newsletter as well as the 2006 and 2007 R&D Laboratory Design Handbook.
Jonathan Friedan, PE, LEED AP, is an engineering principal at Ballinger, a nationally prominent architecture and engineering firm based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, whose focus is the design of technically complex facilities. He has spearheaded the programming, planning, and design of mechanical and electrical systems for major institutional and corporate facilities over the past two decades. His most recent work includes the Sidney E. Frank Hall for Life Sciences at Brown University, the new Molecular Medicine Research Building at Virginia Commonwealth University, Cornell University’s East Campus Research Facility, and the University of Maryland's Bioscience Research Facility. Mr. Friedan authored the engineering sections of the National Science Foundation guidebook on research facilities, and has given lectures nationally on sustainable HVAC design and retrofit strategies. A graduate of Columbia University with both a bachelor's and master's degree in mechanical engineering, he is an active member of ASHRAE, International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE), the American Society for Hospital Engineers, and is a past presenter at Labs21.