Office to Lab Conversion for the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine

ConstructionRenovationsFeaturesProject Profiles

Jun 7

The unique aspect of this office-to-lab conversion project is that its inventive design solution is replicable – meaning, it embeds within it a series of technical design solutions - for meeting the demand for additional fresh air, fume hood exhaust, and airtightness of envelope - which can be successfully tested and applied to other projects
Credit: Arcadis

Arcadis Canada, a large architectural design, planning, and engineering firm, recently completed an office-to-lab conversion project for the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine in downtown Toronto.

Lab Design News spoke to Jay Deshmukh, OAA MRAIC, an associate principal at Arcadis who was the project manager and design lead on the project, and Tiina Hubel, OAA, MRAIC, a senior associate at Arcadis who worked on the project as an architect.

Client (and building owner): Canderel

End-user: Temerty Faculty of Medicine (TFoM)

Architecture and Interior Design: Arcadis

Engineering (Mechanical, Electrical, IT, AV): HIDI Group

Air Quality Engineering: SLR Consulting

Code Consulting: Morrison Hershfield

Construction Manager: Turner Construction Canada

When and how was the decision reached to develop this lab facility? Did it replace an existing facility, or was it developed to meet the need for a new facility?

Jay: The pandemic has only accelerated the demand for laboratory space, particularly in locations that are part of the life sciences ecosystem in cities like Toronto. Arcadis was first engaged by the building owner, Canderel, to conduct a feasibility study to convert the multiple floors of a typical commercial office tower at 777 Bay Street into CL-2/BSL-2 wet and dry lab research spaces for biosciences tenants. Given the inherent challenges in adapting a workplace environment to meet the more stringent infrastructure, life safety, and circulation requirements of biotech research, our multidisciplinary team of architects, engineers, and planners collaborated to uncover the constraints and opportunities presented by this specific building and location in downtown Toronto.

While the feasibility studies examined the potential to convert multiple floors of the building's podium into modular research space for biotech start-ups or institutional clients, our primary focus quickly shifted to evaluating the ninth and tenth floors of the building to meet the specific research space needs of the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine (TFoM). The university’s goal to vacate aging wet labs and a major redevelopment program at their tight urban campus led TFoM to investigate suitable space off campus. This presented the potential to decant ongoing research programs within a cost and time framework, which was better than considering a new building or addition on campus. Further, leveraging suitable decant and expansion space off-campus could facilitate on-campus construction without major disruption to ongoing research and without the additional costs of renovating lab-adjacent spaces during off-hours only.

Though the biotech sector is thriving in Toronto, third party developer research space was almost non-existent in 2020 (this is starting to change with some projects underway now), and the pandemic’s impact on commercial office space led building owners to consider repositioning office spaces to non-traditional uses to address high vacancy rates. 777 Bay's proximity to the university campus, the base build’s structural load capacity, the service elevator’s size and capacity to meet equipment needs, and adjacent rooftop space made it the only space in the immediate vicinity of the campus to meet the criteria for suitable off-campus space for conversion.

Once the feasibility study revealed the potential for conversion within the required technical and financial parameters, the multidisciplinary team led by Arcadis ideated and collaborated extensively with the university's planning team and building management to successfully convert approximately 40,000 square feet over two floors into wet and dry lab space for six principal investigators (PIs) and their teams of approximately eight each.

What kinds of sustainability initiatives have been included in the design plan?

Tiina: Repurposing existing buildings to new uses is an inherently sustainable act since it extends the useful life of the building by leveraging the investment in embodied carbon within the existing structure. Within the context of the post-pandemic city, projects that repurpose vacant office space also embrace social sustainability by bringing vitality back to city cores.

This project includes two specific sustainability initiatives—one holistic and two technology-aided design solutions. The holistic approach was to plan a future-resilient modular lab rather than a PI-centric one, with a racetrack looping wet and dry lab areas, enabling future expansion and contraction of research teams responsive to changes in research focus and/or team size, supported by shared procedure rooms and back-of-house elements. The first technology-aided solution was an unconventional response to the challenge of constructing an exhaust stack for fume hoods within a typical office tower without repurposing an existing stack or building an externally mounted stack to exhaust above the tower's roof. Our team's solution was to first analyze the list and volumes of intended (hazardous and non-hazardous) chemicals relative to the threshold of a filtered fume hood.

Second, SOPs (standard operating procedures) should be developed for any problematic volumes, such that simple changes in procedures could be implemented without adversely affecting research effectiveness. This allowed the use of ductless, self-contained carbon-filtered fume hoods, which, to provide further safety and peace of mind, were coupled with a thimble exhaust to the exterior. The other sustainable design solution is related to optimizing the need for dedicated outside air for lab spaces based on actual use. This was facilitated by using air sampling sensors, which read contaminant levels within individual lab spaces connected to VAV boxes, which allowed the system to ‘ramp down’—thereby using less energy—to minimum permissible levels when the lab was not in use.

Is there anything particularly unique or groundbreaking about your facility or the design plan?

Jay: Vacant office spaces present the exciting potential for repurposing for biotech research, contingent on being able to resolve the technical challenges of such an upgrade within the cost and constructability parameters of the project. Since wet lab functions cannot be implemented in work-from-home mode, and research thrives in clusters benefiting from the proximity between institutions and their partners, cities like Toronto, Boston, and San Francisco with expanding life science ecosystems are keen to widen their array of plausible sites for future expansion. The unique aspect of this office-to-lab conversion project is that its inventive design solution is replicable—meaning, it embeds within it a series of technical design solutions—for meeting the demand for additional fresh air, fume hood exhaust, and airtightness of envelope—which can be successfully tested and applied to other projects.

The solutions for envelope airtightness and maintenance of pressure differentials across spaces are not particularly unique. The solution for providing additional fresh air is interesting. At the outset of the project, TFoM had expected the adjacent roof space to be an essential element, providing the space and location for additional air handling units (and electrical equipment) as required by the lab spaces. Instead, our solution was to consider the optimal arrangement and ratio of mechanical space, offices, write-up (dry lab), and wet lab spaces across the two floors such that the supplemental mechanical spaces could be placed within the leased enclosure without adversely impacting the project investment in the long term.

By combining the two design strategies related to fume hoods and additional AHUs, this kind of contained design solution can potentially be inserted anywhere in a building. That is, such a conversion does not require adjacent roof space or shaft access to the rooftop to be implemented. We were able to construct this within a floor-to-floor height of just 12’—rather than the typically recommended 14’—which adds to the project's list of achievements.

What sorts of challenges did you encounter during the design/build process, and how did you overcome them?

Tiina: Challenges faced during both the design and construction phases included working with low existing floor-to-floor heights of 12’, ensuring that the perimeter curtainwall and gaps between the existing floor slab and curtainwall were sealed to provide the required pressure differentials to meet CL2 lab requirements, as well as the distribution of power along the perimeter of the floor plate, along the curtainwall. An expedited schedule, limited availability, and long delivery of materials and equipment, as a result of supply chain disruptions during the pandemic, as well as moving materials and equipment from street level to the tenth floor, were all logistical challenges faced during construction.

While a design-assist process was considered, a construction manager was engaged towards the end of the construction documentation stage to assist with sequential packages and to align with a GMP (guaranteed maximum price). Through careful coordination and interference verification using a shared BIM model—between the multidisciplinary design team, construction manager, and trades—as a tool throughout design and construction, services were strategically placed to maximize the ceiling heights within the constraints of the existing structure. In addition to accommodating all plenum services, the Cold Room cooling units presented a particular challenge – insufficient space to install units on top of rooms led to them being installed inside the rooms themselves and working with actual equipment and lab benching with this constraint.

To ensure air tightness of the existing envelope and between floors and to design-test and validate pressure differentials between adjacent lab spaces, multiple air pressure tests were conducted, which involved the construction of an airtight testing enclosure at one typical structural bay and a typical corner condition. Vertical mullions were capped with metal plates to cover joints, and continuous metal plates were installed at the underside of the ninth-floor and tenth-floor slabs to seal the gap between the slab and curtainwall. Further air tightness was achieved by adding drywall bulkheads around the perimeter of each lab space to ensure a continuous seal between the walls and ceiling, as well as by using dropped ceilings with gasketed tiles and hold-down clips.

The existing ninth and tenth floors were serviced by six passenger elevators, meaning materials needed to be sized accordingly to be transferred from the ground-level loading dock to the site. Some larger mechanical equipment was delivered disassembled, and assembled on site while some larger items had to be hoisted onto the adjacent eighth-floor roof from the street. This required complex scheduling and coordination as it involved street closures, the removal of existing vertical curtainwall mullions, and temporary structural support of the curtainwall to allow for hoisted materials to be brought in through the ninth-floor windows.

How was lab manager/researcher input incorporated into this design plan? Did you meet with lab users in the kickoff meetings or rely on lab managers to collect their staff member input to relay to you?

Jay: On typical lab design projects, we work directly with lab managers and end-users. However, at TFoM, we benefited from engaging with a team of architects and planners who are part of the Faculty, have a deep understanding of its particular needs and standards, and became a conduit for engagement with internal stakeholders. In the early stages of concept and detailed design, we jointly toured their current research spaces with their lab manager to understand and confirm the planning and technical requirements of the project, including team structures, people and material flows, lab design standards, material and system preferences, service and equipment requirements and safety protocols. As the design and construction phases progressed, our team focused on communicating questions and presenting design options to the ultimate users in a clear manner aided by TFoM’s planners to facilitate two-way discussions and decisions.

While the university provided a functional program and test-fit diagrams based on the then-current needs of research teams in anticipation of a move to 777 Bay, we collectively concluded that a modular approach to lab planning, which would allow research team size and focus to flex over the course of the ten-year lease, was the best way forward. Starting with the original functional program, we analyzed the open wet bench needs of each team; detailed the requirements for specialized procedure rooms to determine small, medium, and large spaces; found efficiencies by standardizing the approach to dry lab space allocations, freezer farms, and cold rooms; and facilitated the interactions between air quality engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical and lab managers to confirm design requirements and strategies for implementation.

Effectively, the project took the proverbial village! Realizing this project required an innovation-oriented mindset with an iterative design process and the technical skills of numerous persons at the university's facilities group, building owner, and multidisciplinary design teams.

If a similar facility or program were to look at your facility for inspiration, what do you think they would take away as an example of what they should also implement in their own lab?

Jay: Across North America and overseas, office vacancies continue to be a challenge, requiring out-of-the-box thinking to generate new possibilities for reinvention. As noted in a previous question related to what makes the project groundbreaking, this small but mighty project is proof of concept that commercial office buildings—even with typical 12’ floor-to-floor heights—can be repurposed for CL-2 biotech research with a collaborative design approach engaging ingenuity and experiment. Conversely, they offer interesting possibilities for institutional clients like universities, who are dealing with undersized or aging buildings on-campus and looking for cost and schedule-aligned spaces to support the decanting or expansion of their modern research enterprise.

Further, underutilized office space is not present only off-campus. The persistence of work-from-home culture is causing all higher education campuses to critically evaluate their overall office footprint—particularly for non-student-facing administrative functions—and to reimagine their portfolios to support their core enterprise of experiential learning and research. Consequently, new future-of-work policies for the academic workplace are freeing up prime campus real estate for uses previously uncontemplated, like wet bench research. Beyond institutions, start-ups in the biotech sector are also looking for cost-effective research space within their industry clusters, close to academic partners. By outlining a pathway to pivot from conventional workplace to research function, our design solutions seed a triple win—for building owners (expanding their lease options), lab users (expanding their potential sites), and cities (revitalizing their downtown cores).