USC Stem Cell Lab Plays the Pragmatic Scientist to Its Site and Context
Glass and granite come together to create a model of practical sustainability and efficiency

by Zach Mortice
Associate Editor

How do you . . . design a laboratory geared towards sustainability and flexibility with difficult site restrictions?

Summary: ZGF’s Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research brings together starkly differing materials to work within the constraints of an inconvenient site. This interdisciplinary lab is designed to maximize modular flexibility and spatial efficiency.

Maximum efficiency at an affordable price is the key idea behind the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research. Zimmer Gunsul Frasca’s (ZGF) lab at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles applies this ideal throughout its parti in terms of circulation, flexibility, and sustainability.

This five-story, 87,537-square-foot interdisciplinary lab is part of a $271 million effort to build 12 new stem cell research facilities in California. After a $30 million gift to the university, it will bear the name of donor Eli Broad, the same philanthropist and civic patron who helped to fund AIA Gold Medal Winner Renzo Piano’s new contemporary art addition to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The lab consists of four rectilinear masses, all defined by their materiality and level of aesthetic weight. The largest mass is a double-paned and finned glass-clad laboratory block. Anchoring this section at its northwest and southeast corners are two volumes clad in black granite, which primarily contain circulation corridors and meeting space. A multi-level glass skywalk connects the north side of the Broad Lab to the adjacent Zilkha Neurogenetics Institute. This skywalk narrows as it enters the Zilkha building, which provides open lounge space at the Broad Lab end and fits into the plan of the Zilkha lab’s façade. Ted Hyman, AIA, a partner at ZGF’s Los Angles office, says this bridge allows the two buildings to share equipment and functions, and that the connection makes the relatively small Broad Lab more a part of the campus community.

“You normally want a slightly bigger building, because it creates a community of researchers and it allows you to share expensive equipment,” he says.

Tight net-to-gross
The largest glass-clad section of the building is dominated by wet bench labs on its second through fifth stories. On each floor, large expanses of open lab space require only a narrow strip of circulation corridors along the west wall. Very little space is wasted in circulation. In the entire building, only this and a fraction of the black granite sections do not serve the facility’s explicit research purpose.

From outside, the lightness of the primary glass section and the weight of the periphery granite masses balance each other with expressive tension, while a decorative graphic pattern on the skywalk helps define the lab’s arrival experience. Visitors and researchers will enter the lab from the east side, into a cut away cantilever, and through a glass-framed doorway that serves the northwest corner circulation volume. This puts visitors and researchers in the reception area in a double-height atrium, with views up to the second floor and into a fritted, glass-walled conference room on the ground floor. Hyman says security requirements prohibit open public access to the labs, but the views upward and outward help people to connect and orient themselves to different parts and functions of the lab. Interior materials also include the black granite used outside, stone pavers, and maple wood to warm the design.

“Plug and play”
These connection-enhancing views should be a boon to the interdisciplinary nature of the lab, as organizations from outside the university and within it will move in after construction begins in September. The modular flexibility of the lab should also aid in its role as a collaborate place of research. Hyman says the casework components of the lab are “plug and play.” Some lab fixtures and furniture can be changed in a matter of hours. “The key is that all the infrastructure is there,” Hyman says. “If I want to take computational space and make it into lab space, it’s one set of casework.”

ZGF designed the areas that are likely to change the least after a few decades worth of scientific advancement to be the most permanent and immutable, like the cold room, tissue culture room, and the basement-housed imaging equipment.

Site shielding
For Hyman and his team to get to the LEED® Silver certification they desire, they’ve had to contend with a seriously inopportune site orientation. To preserve open quad space and room for a future building, the Broad Lab’s widest facades face east and west. Solar shielding became vital for both sides, and ZGF used a different strategy for each. On the west side, glass fins diffuse solar energy. On the east side, a system of double-paned glass pairs transparent sections and translucent sections in an alternating pattern. This maintains the visual privacy of the occupants, prevents solar heat gain, and allows daylighting to cover all of the lab spaces. Additionally, the lab will have a reflective roof and use a chilled beam cooling system that pushes air across chilled coils.

Hyman says these sustainability practices aren’t showroom flourishes; they’re pragmatic facets of quality lab design. “We’re not buying any LEED points,” he says. “Everything we’re doing is either because it’s the right thing to do in a lab, or there’s a payback we can prove.”