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SHOWCASE:
Continuity Through Facility Osmosis
The University of North Carolina's (UNC) Biomolecular Research Center connects buildings and facilitates medical research.

By John Parkinson
Photography © Jonathan Hillyer / Atlanta

UNC has a history steeped in research and development. The school is one of three colleges in the state that helped define the renowned Research Triangle Park. Developed in the 1950s as a place to attract economic development, the Research Triangle is an area in central North Carolina made up of 6,900 acres-and according to late 1990s statistics-has over 100 organizations and more than 40,000 employees dedicated to research and development in a variety of disciplines.

It is with that tradition in mind that UNC has continued its devotion to research through the years. This is most noticeable in the university's newly constructed Biomolecular Research Center in Chapel Hill, NC. This research building is the centerpiece structure anchored by Taylor Hall on one side and the Neuroscience Research Building on the other. It opened in May 2003 and is dedicated to academic biomedical research and medical instruction for graduate school students.

The center is 228,935 square feet and cost over $64 million to construct. It was built with funding from a higher education bond referendum and prior state appropriations.

Impetus

Bob Marriott, associate dean of the school of medicine for resource analysis, planning, and management, explains the reasoning for constructing the center at that particular time.

"NIH (National Institutes of Health) was fueling growth of medical research in the whole country, and we had researchers who were successful in tapping into that growth," says Marriott. In the last several years, the NIH has increased its grant budgets. As a direct result, schools and research institutions are seeing greater funding increases.

When design bids for the project were first solicited, architects were asked to design a building half the size of the eventual one. And more importantly, the original plan called for a standalone building.

However, a personnel change at the university created a major modification in design specs.

"The medical school hired a new dean for the school (Jeffrey Houpt), and he wanted to maximize the space on that particular building, so he charged us with determining how large the building could be," states Kent Brown, project architect, Lord, Aeck & Sargent. It was through this exercise, Brown explains, that the decision was made to connect two other buildings and create a larger contiguous research complex.

Connecting Corridors And Floors

This directive to connect one new building to two other separate, existing buildings and create a cohesive research center became one of Brown's major obstacles to overcome.

"The challenge was connecting to two other buildings where none of the existing floor elevations lined up. We had to use a series of stairs, ramps, and custom elevators to accommodate that," he explains.

While it may have been difficult for Brown and his project colleagues to connect the complex, the end result for facilities users is ease of movement between structures. Elevators, for example, can be used to transport people between buildings.

"Each building has an elevator that has doors on two sides," says Marriott. To differentiate the buildings to elevator users, the elevators have floor numbers for one building and floor letters for another.

Bendable Building

During the design process, Brown worked with school researchers and the medical hierarchy to get a sense of what characteristics the building should display.

Brown states, "having flexible research space, both the office and laboratory space was paramount."

This characteristic was deemed essential so that when university officials wanted to make changes down the road, repairs could be made to a single laboratory or an entire floor without the interruption of shutting down those areas.

"A lot of changes could be done by engineering or operations/maintenance staff in what we call vertical interstitial spaces or utility chases. Changes in electrical power and data, [and] changes in pipe utilities or air flow could be made almost entirely outside the laboratory," says Brown.

And the man who is responsible for writing those work orders for the building agrees. "It is the flexibility of this building that is its greatest strength," concludes Marriott.

A Shared Facility

There are several medical departments that coexist within the center. The cardiology, infectious diseases, genetics, surgery, cell and molecular physiology, and pediatric departments all reside in the center and provide ample evidence the building has great flexibility. The numerous medical department staff members and students are not the only "living creatures" in the facility. In addition to housing offices and labs for researchers, the building has other occupants. However, they are occupants most facility professionals do not wish to have in their buildings: mice!

Medical research is often predicated on animal research, and mice play a significant role in experiments. While it is a hard reality, these animals must reside somewhere close to the labs. The Biomedical Research Center contains a 20,000 square foot animal facility that houses 7,000 mouse cages. The facility has its own HVAC system.

The university's Division of Laboratory Animal Medicine has a full time staff in the building to care for the animals. The facility can also be converted to hold other types of animals if needed.

IT, Research, and Workspace

One of Bob Marriott's core responsibilities is space planning initiatives. Marriott-along with three executive associate deans-meet weekly to discuss spacing needs or problems.

He emphasizes the importance of computer technology in correlation with contemporary research and the impact it has on lab footprints. "There's a larger bioinformatics component to research then there has been in the past," he says. Bioinformatics is both the analysis of biological information using computers and statistical techniques, and the science of developing computer databases and algorithms to accelerate and enhance biological research. Therefore, computers are vital research tools for scientists.

The laboratories were designed with such foreknowledge and contain spacious places to conduct computer work and write analysis in the corners of the rooms. The sinks and traditional lab areas ubiquitous throughout these facilities are located in the center of these rooms, thus decreasing spacing needs for pipes and ductwork.

Dr. James Anderson, chair of cell and molecular physiology comments on the footprint's resulting aesthetic. "It makes everybody feel they have an office area."

Security Measures

The center's security is managed through Marriott's office. His department issues photo ID badges, and through building automation, decipher when rooms are open and closed.

The building is open during the day to accommodate students and other people using the building, but it closes nightly and on weekends. The badges are used mostly for off hours and highly sensitive areas such as the center's biosafety labs.

Although Marriott's team is able to control access for people using most of the building, there are two areas that are harder to manage: the center's 200 and 500 seat auditoriums.

"The question in using the building is how do you manage a 500 seat auditorium for public events and retain an appropriate level of security for the adjacent laboratories?" asks Marriott.

Because there is a central public lobby entrance for the complex, people using either the auditoriums or laboratories gain ingress through one entry. However, these concerns have been addressed for the most part through a series of security door upgrades to gain entry into the laboratories tower.

There remains one major advantage to having the open lobby. People can use the lobby and four story atrium as a lounge area or meeting place to congregate. This creates a collaborative element that the school was hoping to achieve, says Brown.

Ready For Primetime

While the auditoriums are primarily used for educational instruction for first year and second year medical graduate students, they can also host events there for lecturing dignitaries or medical specialists. Each auditorium seat has a power and data jack that can be used to plug in individual laptops or various other electronic devices.

These rooms are set up to beam television images into the auditoriums or broadcast out.

With the completion of the Biomolecular Research Center, UNC's medical school not only has continued its tradition of research and development, but has enabled the numerous disciplines within the field to thrive in the same environment. The center is a sanctuary for students' and scientist studies, and elicits their hopes and dreams associated with the achievement of medical education and research.