We were recently brought in to design a lab and office space for an emerging biotech research and development company. Like many up and coming companies, they have a strong need and desire for flexibility. Though moving into a larger space, they wanted maintain their elasticity and ease of shifting the direction of their work. In order to achieve their goal, we worked with the concept of a completely movable laboratory zone. The design called for a main general lab and six individual more specialized lab spaces. The concept of the movable and flexible lab is well established in main labs. However, taking this leap to the specialized lab is new and brought an interesting set of challenges. The goal for the client, however, was clear. They wanted to be able to switch around the relationships between rooms and groups. Thus entire labs should be able to be moved without much difficulty or down-time.
Our approach to the problem was simple, rather than conforming the rooms to the specific requirements of each lab space, we analyzed the labs and their needs and developed a single lab size and proportion that would work for each space. The sink and emergency shower was similarly located in a consistent space by the door to the corridor. Lab benches and equipment then were fit to the space established. Working with company, we found that the spaces worked well within the established boundaries. In the early stages of design, the client switched the functions of the rooms as they grappled with developing their desired adjacencies. As happens in many young companies, they were working through their organizational needs as we were developing the plan. This interworking and collaboration further validated our approach to the specialty lab designs as it enabled our office to continue the design as our clients developed their workflow, allowing the project to stay on schedule and on budget.
As we look toward the future of the company, we can visualize that their ability to shift the functions of the rooms will allow them to make connection and changes within their work that will keep them nimble and on top of their research. We learned in our work with with biotech firms (and indeed this applies to many other types of companies as well), that is it critical to ask about their needs for flexibility. Key questions are how do they establish their workgroups, what kind of connections are there between various research groups within the company. Our initial exercise of diagramming workflow showed that our clients had divergent views of the ideal flow, all of which had legitimacy and potential. By creating a design and floor plan that allows the client to play out difference scenarios we were able to deliver a project that can serve the client well over the next five to ten years. This is critical in today’s market, where the importance is in investing in research and development and not in renovating space each year as needs change. Importantly, we were then able to focus not on reworking the plan, but on developing the design and the environment in which the researchers will spend their time.