By Healthcare Facilities Today

The recent renovation of the Molecular Therapeutics laboratory in the Kolb Building of the New York State Psychiatric Institute is a model of the changing waves in laboratory design, according to an article on the Healthcare Construction + Operations website.

The 10,500-square-foot laboratory includes more flexible spaces designed to create a welcoming and relaxed environment for researchers to create innovations in the molecular sciences, the article said.

The shift more light-filled and collaborative laboratory space is not specifically laboratories moving toward an office atmosphere; there is a larger shift in all workspaces, Henry Meltzer, executive vice president and principal-in-charge of Stonehill Taylor’s health/sciences group, said in the article.

"On a macro level, work spaces in all fields are moving towards a collaborative environment to foster teamwork and enhance brainstorming sessions. The reasoning behind this shift in wet labs is two-fold; one is the need for collaboration within in the workspace, and the other caters to the phased process of grant-funded research within these facilities," Meltzer said.

"For the researchers to be able to seamlessly move between projects, the facility must allow for this flexibility. The benches are flexible and not fixed, with mobile cabinets, height adjustable tops and 'umbilical' utility connections at ceiling," he said.

According to Meltzer, there is the growing trend to move away from built-in or fixed benches to movable ones. Research is also moving away from the wet lab, as there is a growing demand for dry or computational lab settings.

Read the article.