Scientists walk into the lab and say ‘wow’ because of how functional it is. Non-scientists walk in and say ‘wow’ because of how beautiful it is.
Robert Burk, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Chemistry
The Steacie Superlab has been recognized by R & D Magazine’s Lab of the Year Award competition. It has been awarded a Special Mention Award for outstanding results in achieving the goals of a project with demanding requirements. Morrison Hershfield acted as prime consultant and laboratory planner.
The Challenge
The Steacie Chemistry Building Superlab was born out of Carleton University’s desire to increase the student capacity of the existing facility while heightening the profile of the department within the academic community, both locally and beyond. In today’s academic and economic climate, the ability of an institution to be able to respond to competing requirements (i.e. the need for increased student enrollment within the space limitations of an existing stock of aging academic facilities) is a common but difficult task.
To add to this daunting requirement, academic institutions are competing for funding opportunities as well as attracting the most promising young minds to join their ranks.
The original 1964 laboratory layouts provided the basic components that needed to be reconfigured into a new and exciting centre of learning. The existing laboratories had a limited student capacity of 24 students per lab with five original wooden fume hoods, all ganged together next to the mechanical shafts at one end of the lab.
When considering the entire available project area, its key physical elements, the building’s shear walls and the mechanical service shafts provided both definition and limitation to the laboratories expansion planning.
The challenge would be in finding the new floor area to accommodate the additional student capacity as well as improving the functional requirements of a large capacity, equipment-driven teaching machine.
The Solution
The simplicity of the Superlab solution is based in its open concept design. While having an open concept is not in itself an unusual solution to a problem, the Steacie Chemistry Building’s unique physical challenges make this laboratory both a wonderful place to teach as well as to learn.
This outcome was achieved by demolishing the entire center core labs, recombining the duplicated support functions within the new Superlab itself, and by utilizing the economies of the larger new space to increase the fume hood capacity from 20 smaller outdated fume hoods to 47 new state of the art teaching fume hoods, each serving two students instead of five.
The other direct outcome of the new design was the incorporation of the existing ring corridor into the teaching environment, as well as using one leg of the ring to house modular preparation labs.
The super scale of the laboratory allowed for the safest possible layout of the lab equipment itself, including provisions for barrier-free access, in keeping with Carleton University’s current design and safety standards.
The Result
This dramatic renovation of multiple smaller but outdated laboratories into an advanced Superlab makes the most out of the University’s physical resources and illustrates how architects and engineers can collaborate to provide innovative thinking in a time of reduced financial resources.
‘The only lab that looked like fun to be in.’
Jury comments, R&D Magazine, 2009 Lab of the Year Competition.
