A Chicago Research Triangle

New University Labs Built for Collaborative Research

by Don Talend

North Carolina isn’t the only place with a “research triangle.”

In the Chicago area, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University and Dominican University have constructed interdisciplinary facilities that are giving the region the latest science research and teaching capabilities.

advertisement

The institutions are putting a greater emphasis on advanced scientific capabilities as competition for top faculty and students increases and the sciences make disparate discoveries that might unlock answers to diseases such as cancer.

Dennis Vovos, associate principal of project management at Chicago-based architect Holabird & Root, architect on a project at Dominican University, says top students and their parents expect a collaborative research experience with instructors.

In addition, some of the biggest advances in research have come from the interaction that occurs within interdisciplinary research environments, adds Ted Hyman, partner with Los Angeles-based Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects, a firm involved in projects at the University of Chicago and Northwestern. Highly flexible space allows researchers, faculty and students to naturally find opportunities for critical “intellectual collisions,” Hyman says.

Flexibility for Medical Specialties

The $162.5 million, 10-story, 330,760-sq-ft Jules and Gwen Knapp Center for Biomedical Discovery at the University of Chicago Medical Center, which broke ground in October 2005 and is scheduled to open in March 2009, is conceived for cancer research and pediatrics. The construction and design of the soon-to-be-tallest building on the Hyde Park campus provide for maximum flexibility to help principal investigators, postdoctoral students and graduate students collaboratively solve advanced problems in medicine.

The Institute for Pediatric Molecular Sciences program which accounts for about half of the building’s research space will incorporate genomics, biophysics, physiology and clinical studies to determine how genetics influence pediatric diseases for development of more effective treatments.

The CBD will also house facilities for the Cancer Research Center’s Center for Metastasis Research on an entire floor, one of only six centers in the nation devoted to the study of how metastasis the process by which cells break off from the original tumor and lodge elsewhere in the body is linked to cancer.

The CBD will accommodate 82 PIs and 16 labs 10 “wet” lab stations and one “dry” computational lab station on levels four through 10, four wet stations on level one and a wet core lab on level three.

Level two is a vivarium for raising plants and animals for research.

Hyman says spaces were created to encourage the interaction of research within each department and among departments.

At the heart of each floor is a series of two-level spaces with an interconnecting stair linking pairs of floors. Each of these spaces has a break area and seating with coffee bar to encourage interaction among researchers on adjacent floors. The north end of the building has a second set of two-level spaces that link the floors from top to bottom and are equipped with clustered conference rooms.

Office space was also configured in a “parallel bar” relative to the labs to provide connectivity between the researchers and their labs. The area between offices and the labs has a unique open plan that can be configured for research space, administrative support workstations, interaction space and overflow graduate student seating.

Because predicting exactly how research needs might change in the future is impossible, the CBD was designed for maximum flexibility, Hyman says. During the design process, Zimmer Gunsul Frasca first studied the mutual finishes, casework, equipment and laboratory service requirements for scientific cancer, pediatrics and medical research.

When it came time to install wet-lab services, these were distributed overhead to service panels within the open labs. Service panels are equipped with quick disconnects below the ceiling, and the casework system is a “plug and play” lab bench system that includes all plumbing, data and electrical distribution.

Quick disconnects at the top of the shelving attached to each bench allow researchers to quickly move and reconfigure their labs. Besides maximizing flexibility, this system saved the university 10% on the combined cost of casework and lab services distribution.

The facility will be part of a larger network of medical buildings. Enclosed walkways on the first and third levels will connect the new building to the Biological Sciences Learning Center. The CBD will also connect via third-level bridges south to the Center for Integrative Science, the largest science building in the history of the university that opened in November 2005, and east to the Donnelley Biological Sciences Learning Center, the primary teaching facility for medical students.

Marty Burgwinkle, project executive with general contractor Turner Construction Co. in Chicago, says that individual researchers’ requirements have led to some revisions to shop drawings because sometimes mechanical, plumbing and fire protection services have been impacted.

“The challenge is that with those revisions, some are mechanical, plumbing and fire protection services, and we need to re-coordinate our shop drawings to integrate those changes,” he says.

Science Precinct at Northwestern

About 25 mi. north, Northwestern University in Evanston broke ground in March 2007 for the $100 million, four-story, 147,000-sq-ft Richard and Barbara Silverman Hall for Molecular Therapeutics & Diagnostics, which will bring together chemists, biologists and engineers for interdisciplinary research toward development of new medicines and diagnostics. The building is expected to in fall 2009.

Silverman Hall will provide shared instrumentation including facilities for therapeutics and diagnostics, proteomics and genomics and computational bioinformatics. Construction of the building is part of a major expansion of Northwestern’s science facilities during the past few years that includes the Ford Motor Co. Engineering Design Center, which opened in 2005.

Silverman Hall will connect to two other interdisciplinary facilities, Gladys Pancoe-Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Life Sciences Pavilion and Shirley W. Ryan Hall, via elevated walkways. The three buildings were designed by Zimmer Gunsul Fransca and will use complementary colors and materials to form a “science precinct.”

Silverman Hall itself will have a Chemistry of Life Processes Institute designed for an interdisciplinary approach to understanding molecular life processes. The facility will be designed to integrate the chemistry, biology, engineering and medical disciplines for research in diverse areas such as medicinal chemistry and drug design, molecular assembly imaging, and computational approaches to genetics and proteomics the study of protein sets in organisms.

The casework system in Silverman Hall’s labs will be “plug and play” with table, shelving and service carrier integrated into a single furniture unit. Utilities will be integrated into the table legs with flexible cords and tubing connected to the ceiling utilities, allowing quick disconnects and lab reconfiguration without the need to call the Office of Facilities.

Interdisciplinary for Science, Other

Completing the triangle is the $38 million Parmer Hall at Dominican University in River Forest.

The four-story, Gothic, 124,000-sq-ft facility opened for classes in the fall with lab facilities for biology, chemistry, physics, psychology, and nutrition and dietetics.

The now-largest building on campus is roughly shaped in an “H” configuration with three wings that house the science, nutrition and psychology programs. There also are classrooms for humanities and graduate courses as well as a Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence, a lecture hall, a provost office suite, student commons areas on each level and a central atrium.

Parmer Hall is interdisciplinary in terms of both the sciences and instruction in general, says Amy McCormack, senior vice president for administration.

“We’re a liberal arts and science university, so we’re multidisciplinary at our core,” she says. “Because of our physical constraints with land and [financial] constraints, this will be probably the largest academic building that we build and we want to make sure that it’s efficiently built.”

The building has 15 classrooms and 16 lab facilities, and the labs that are used for science instruction are equipped with lab equipment around the perimeter and movable tables in the center, allowing use as a conventional classroom. One psychology lab has dry computation stations around the perimeter and movable tables in the center for similar flexibility.

Also, wet lab services such as a central vacuum system and a reverse-osmosis purification system for deionized water are centralized in one facility.

“Given that it’s a central system, they’re manifolded, so there are ways you can add on or decrease the number of outlets that you have,” adds Holabird & Root’s Vovos. “All of the fume hood systems are manifolded together so you don’t have a fan per hood; they all work off of a series of fans, so you’re getting economies of scale and flexibility.

Click here for next Feature Story >>