Though the pandemic has dramatically expanded work-from-home possibilities in many industries, it has also shown how hands-on and equipment-dependent research continues to rely on purpose-built laboratory spaces. As downtown cores continue to struggle with high vacancy rates, the potential for converting office space to research labs has received considerable attention. This is particularly true in cities like Toronto, where the convergence between academic research, the healthcare sector and the biotech industry has gained traction over the past decade, yet the availability of appropriate leasable space for wet bench research remains in short supply.

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Retrofitting conventional office space to labs allows institutions and start-ups to expand their research footprint without having to build new facilities. While this strategy also offers new possibilities for commercial landlords, it has inherent challenges related to providing infrastructure requirements, life safety, security and containment, the needs of which often exceed the typical office building provisions. It also requires working with existing structural grids, and the typical floor-to-floor heights for office real estate, which can be challenging when incorporating additional mechanical systems and providing exhaust systems per local regulations. However, with innovative and integrated design and construction strategies, it is possible to repurpose office spaces to laboratories, thereby opening a new avenue for regenerating urban cores while reinforcing the Science +Technology sector.

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The presentation will share the challenges and lessons learned from an office-to-lab renovation in a downtown Toronto office tower for the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine. We will explore the functional needs, integrated design strategies and constructability issues, which were resolved through the active collaborative efforts of the landlords, stakeholders, and design team. We will review the project’s development from the feasibility study to design, and through (early) implementation, highlighting the space and circulation planning approach, provision for infrastructure upgrades and regulatory requirements, containment and security considerations and construction strategies to meet schedule and budget.

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While renovating existing space is an implicitly sustainable act when compared with new construction, if not carefully implemented it can cause significant disruption to adjacent tenants and core building infrastructure. Our project demonstrates the fundamental feasibility of introducing highly serviced laboratory space into existing office buildings in a minimally invasive and self-contained manner. In addition, we will address our approach towards resilient design, whereby we have shaped this lab-of-the-future to be agile – moving away from research-specific programmatic and infrastructure requirements to a flex lab approach which can adapt to future changes without requiring further renovations. Furthermore, this project serves as a model for reimagining multiple floors of this and other commercial towers and for the university’s Faculty of Medicine to test this agile “new normal” space planning approach as they embark on a major redevelopment project at their core campus.

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Presenters:

• Heather Taylor, Executive Director, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto

• Jay Deshmukh, Architect, Arcadis