University of Toronto Temerty Faculty of Medicine Research Labs

The ensuing design developed by a multidisciplinary team led by Arcadis addressed a number of significant challenges posed by existing office space limitations within the building, such as floor-to-floor heights and appropriate circulation flows for researchers and materials. 

Significantly, as the research spaces were being planned for the 10th floor of a 30-floor building, a traditional retrofit approach would have required 20 floors of vertical ducting, a need which would typically involve the repurposing of an elevator core or core building shaft, which would have cascading impacts on constructability and services for other building tenants. Instead, the building’s existing HVAC systems were meticulously modified to meet the stringent requirements of CL2 wet labs by using ductless filtered fume hoods with a redundant exhaust system – a creative design approach that was determined to be both technically feasible and sustainably cost-effective. 

The entire space conversion design process was highly iterative, requiring multiple conceptual plan alternatives that would consider flexible open wet-lab arrangements with secondary labs for specific research processes, their adjacencies and circulation flow to dry labs and shared equipment spaces, and the accommodation of additional HVAC systems to meet lab requirements. Through multiple iterations, we developed an optimal arrangement of wet lab, dry lab/write up, offices, training spaces, media recording studio and mechanical and electrical space over two adjacent floors. 

Further, Arcadis developed a modular and adaptable solution for open wet bench labs supported by small, medium, and large secondary lab spaces with shared back-of-house support spaces, enabling the spaces to accommodate future changes in research focus without requiring infrastructure modifications. Circulation flow from the adjacent dry lab spaces was configured for teams of eight graduate students per principal investigator, while a continuous circulation loop would provide flexibility for groups to occupy more or less space as research needs change.  

For Canderel, the solution provided a clear picture of the full range of potential costs and complexities associated with converting office space to lab use while also delivering an operational framework to achieve such conversions in a cost-effective and sustainable manner. To this end, Arcadis worked with Canderel’s management and operational teams to help them understand the potential to convert multiple levels of the building for future institutional and industry-based tenants within the growing life sciences sector using modular and flexible lab designs that can enable multiple research teams to utilize the space without needing any further significant changes to the physical infrastructure.