This unique, $100 million effort involves a cluster of academic research buildings and includes both a 12-story, 400,000 sq. ft. biomedical research tower and a thermal energy plant. Our design focused on creating a structural solution capable of supporting sensitive medical research activities. The design also needed to accommodate present and future floor and ceiling penetrations for services to the wet labs. With this in mind, we adopted a policy to straddle the layout of the laboratory benches with the structural beams. This allows any future penetrations to be located under the benches without impacting main concrete beams.

 

Reinforced concrete structural systems respond to the need for vibration mitigation because of greater internal damping compared with steel systems. Damping reduces a floor system’s vibration response and the vibration velocity, as well as the length of time the floor system vibrates following a footfall. Reinforced concrete also provides effective fire protection without the need for additional spray fire coating that could compromise the facility’s relatively clean room environment.