From left to right: inboard design, outboard design, nested design..

Making walkways a contrasting colour to work areas can help with circulation around the lab, plus help prevent busy scientists from walking into worktops and dropping samples or chemicals..Structural requirements.

The main issues we have come across for structural engineers have been coordination with services.There can be many changes throughout the lab design period, particularly with client equipment, and this can result in lots of changes to the services.. Coordinating the services at high level can be difficult, so every effort should be made to reduce beam depths or use castellated beams if this is not possible..The biggest and most recurring challenge, however, is usually due to new services needing penetrations or alternative routing due to changes to client laboratory equipment.

Labs need a higher air change rate than offices or other building types, which means lots of ductwork to and from the lab.This is exacerbated if there are fume cupboards, as the discharges go to the roof and discharge vertically.

The discharge stacks for these fans can be quite high, so we may have to design roof supports for flues.. One unusual issue we encountered was a vibration requirement for an X-ray machine.

This is further evidence of the importance of understanding the purpose of the laboratory equipment being installed early in the lab design process..Carmona, Matthew, Claudio De Magalhães, and Michael Edwards, 'What Value Urban Design?

", URBAN DESIGN International, 7 (2002), 63-81.Samuel, Flora, and Eli Hatleskog, "Social Value in Architecture", Architectural Design, 90 (2020), 9.

Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 (London: HM Government, 2012).To learn more about our Design to Value approach to design and construction, sign up for our monthly newsletter here:.