When Carleton University received funding from the provincial government to renovate the Steacie Chemistry Building, the university sought the expertise of Morrison Hershfield to assemble a team of architects, engineers and designers to assist them in realizing their desire to not only update their existing facility to meet today’s rigorous health and safety standards but to provide a state of the art chemistry laboratory.

The challenge inherent in this mandate was to find a way to adapt and reuse an existing facility that had not been updated since its original construction in 1964, while providing this new facility in time for the upcoming academic year. A further challenge was to provide increased student teaching capacity within the lab environment itself so that the existing maximum enrolment could be increased from 96 to 124.

The outcome of this effort was the Chemistry Superlab. This new teaching lab was achieved by demolishing all of the existing teaching labs and prep labs and utilizing the freed up area to create open teaching modules of twelve students per one TA in such a way that the organic chemistry classes can be taught concurrent with the first year chemistry classes, allowing for fluctuation in class sizes.

The new Superlab encompasses 6,500 sf of lab space and included the replacement the existing old wooden fume hoods with 47 new fume hoods. The teaching zones are equipped with live A/V cameras and screens to assist in managing larger class sizes.  The project was delivered using a standard stipulated sum contract and was on time and 20% under budget.