A Conversation with Bill Harris, Managing Director of Perkins&Will's New York studio

Bill Harris is the managing director of Perkins&Will's New York studio. Lab Design News spoke to Bill about Innolabs, adaptive reuse, and market trends.

LDN: Could you please introduce yourself?

BH:  I'm managing director of the New York studio, Perkins&Will, which means that I basically run the studio and all the practices within; so that's healthcare, interiors, education, science and technology, the administrative parts, the culture, and all that.

My background is in science and technology in particular. I spent the bulk of my career until five years ago actually in Boston; probably seven [years ago]. There was a period of time when 75 percent of my work was a walk from the Kendall Square station, so I've grown up working with life science, commercial life, and science companies in particular. So everything from startups and mid-sized companies to large pharmaceuticals, Pfizer for example.

I had my own firm for 23 years and commercial labs were one of our areas of focus. After the 2008 and 2009 collapse of the economy, it became almost 100 percent of our work because it was the only show in town. We then joined Perkins&Will in 2012, they sort of began to recognize that their Boston studio had a science practice, but it was more on the academic science side, and not on the commercial side; in Boston being on the commercial side was sort of critical.

While the Boston Office of Perkins&Will did not have commercial lab work per se, they had commercial developer work, and this is about the time when developers were starting to take an interest in building for lease to lab companies.

Ultimately I ended up taking this position in New York, running the studio, and also building up a science practice in New York.

LDN: What are the benefits of adaptive reuse specifically for life science facilities?

BH: Cost and speed to market.

It's so much easier to build ground-up new construction for labs because you can pick all the dimensions that you want, the organization, and so forth. Ultimately it is faster and less expensive to renovate existing buildings.

Speed to market is almost everything in this world, and the reason is that these life science companies spend obviously tens of millions of dollars developing drugs and therapies, and there are many instances where they will be six to eight years into a ten-year cycle and a competitor launches a drug ahead of them, and they say we're gonna shut down.

I remember interviewing a life science client years ago, and what I learned from them is that the layout and organization of their facility can influence speed to market.

They can actually put a dollar sign on it and say that if our scientists could communicate better, if there was more opportunity for collaboration if the facilities in the lab were better supported by the facilities, and the office and the backup facility and all these other technical things they start to shave weeks or months of development time. That could be the crucial difference between hitting the market first or hitting it second, and so the design really has a huge impact on success and research.

LDN: Why do you think there is an increase in adaptive reuse facilities in New York, and other urban areas, versus suburban areas? What is the push to be in more developed neighborhoods?

BH: I think that there's so much building stock in urban areas that is probably underperforming. It's best real estate value and a lot of stock is not suitable or eligible for lab use either because of dimensional constraints or vibration in the building, or location, or mechanical support.

If you can take advantage of an existing building then you save an enormous amount of time and dollars. You also integrate with the community in an interesting way. So scientists are used to thinking of them as just lab coat technical people, but they're not. They're the most cutting-edge, exciting, engaged people in communities, and they’re the equivalent of the sort of garage techies of the creators of Apple, and so forth.

The idea that they're in an environment that feels not garage-like, but a little bit more innovative and less corporate, and less structure has a big appeal, and you often get that more easily in older buildings. You get the sense that there's more flexibility, and more free-thinking because you're already in an environment that has reinterpreted your surroundings.

When we build new we try very much to keep that kind of character and spirit in the space, because it makes a difference. So I think that it's very appealing to scientists, and the bottom line for all of this is that our developer clients are desperately trying to attract tenants.

The tenants are desperately trying to attract talent because everything is about the talent, the most innovative, and the brightest mix of scientists and technicians and clinicians, and everybody else that's required to do this. The companies want great environments to attract the talent, so it becomes very competitive and ultimately about the talent; putting buildings in places that are parts of communities where people are not isolated, and it's hard to do that with new construction.

LDN:  Are there any limitations with adaptive reuse?

BH: The first thing that we look at is the floor-to-floor heights. The second thing that we look at is the column spacing. When you do a lab approximately 50 percent of a tenant area is lab space, and 50 percent is office space. So you have to accommodate both programs and for the lab space, the furniture that makes up the lab or lab benches; lab benches require a certain clearance and dimension in order to be effective.

Another factor that we look at very closely is the relationship between where the core of the building is, and where the perimeter is; we think of the core as being the bathrooms, the elevators, the primary stairs, and so forth, and so you get that and then you get all this open space around it.

If you're just doing offices, desks [are] relatively small, and can be accommodated in lots of different ways, but when you're doing lab benches and lab support areas, the sizes of those components and elements are bigger, so you really pay attention to the relationship between the core and the outside wall for how effectively you can plan those, not just for efficiency, but also for the relationship that ultimately results between the lab area and the office tech area.

LDN: What do you think are some of the best examples of adaptive reuse?

BH:  I think that our Innolabs project is actually a remarkably good example. I mean, I've done a lot of these projects and what I find incredible about that particular project is, first of all, the aesthetics of it. It's extremely artful. We were able to take the geometries and the character of the old building, extend them, and not replicate them, but bring in that sort of ineffable feeling of a tech building with the new construction parts.

So aesthetically, I think that has been really successful. We worked very diligently to take the core facilities that were required, those elevators and bathrooms and so forth, and locate them in particular areas that have given us a huge amount of flexibility, adaptability, and the layout of each floor.

LDN:  Do you have a favorite part about Innolabs?

BH:  I think my three favorite parts are the adaptability of the plan, the life in the lobby where you really feel a sense of community, and then the facade. It's graceful and interesting.

LDN: Do you have any predictions about adaptive reuse, about how it'll evolve in the future?

BH: Research and success breeds success, and so when you are in urban areas and you're collecting groups of companies that are doing research, it is likely that you'll be in areas where there's lots of existing building stock.

I think that renovations and adaptive reuse will continue to be a strong elements. I think that the more questions there are about people returning to office space, the more likely it is that people will look to adapt buildings for lab use because it can be very viable.

I also think that this trend of institutional users, either academic medical centers or universities becoming tenants and commercial lab buildings is a trend. There are some cautions about what impact that has on the typical infrastructure plan for a commercial building on the turn around time, on expectations of developers; developers think in very different speeds than academic institutions typically work, and then the third prediction that I have is really open-ended and unknown.

AI has dramatically altered the way that proteins are studied, and other elements of typical conventional lab activities are being done. I don't know the answer to that, but I think that it's something we all need to be very aware of is that the standard benchtop activities that have been going on for a century, will change and evolve over time. They've already evolved dramatically with the use of robotics and other technical equipment that goes into labs, but even the robotics and technical equipment require clean lab rooms. AI may change that.

LDN: Is there anything else that you'd like to add or mention?

BH:  A cautionary tale, we usually think of adaptive reuse as taking a building that was not used for labs and converting it to lab use.I think we've sort of covered within sort of technical constraints that it's a viable thing to continue in the future. The commercial lab activities, and lab expectations, and the user expectations for today's market are very different than they were when those older buildings, lab buildings were created.