This new corporate research and development laboratory pushes innovation through flexible research, interaction, and office environments that improve collaboration across divisions and with industry partners, while maintaining internal and external confidentiality.
The LEED Silver-certified facility is efficient, with minimized redundancies, a floor plan that highlights flexible adjacencies, and “bandwidths” of infrastructure and support capability to minimize physical burdens, to preserve long-term utilization, and reduce operational expenditures. Labs are designed to offer a high degree of flexibility in use, as well as the ability to be easily reconfigured in the future due to staffing changes or changes in research.
The facility, which houses more than 700 researchers and scientists, is shaped in two wings with labs and offices planned on the four floors in the same manner in both wings. High intensity labs are located on one side with the low/medium intensity labs occupying the middle of each wing. The use of heat recovery systems, variable air volume fume hoods and cascading air from offices to high-intensity labs are modeled to reduce energy costs by 28 percent and produce 37 percent in energy savings.
A service corridor in between will serve all these labs. The offices are located on the other side of the wing from the high intensity labs. The majority of the offices will be open with no solid walls.
Various breakout and teaming spaces will bring the teams together. Specialized clean rooms, constant temperature and humidity rooms will be located at strategic locations. An application lab, loading dock, mechanical and electrical rooms are located in the east wing on the first floor.
Minnesota
466,000 GSF
Strategic planning, programming, lab design through construction documents, construction administration assistance
LEED Silver
BWBR