Bio-Technopark Zurich, 2021
Story
The Bio-Technopark Zurich in Schlieren is a privately developed facility that provides commodity rental lab space. Its tenants consist of biotech and pharmaceutical research companies, public universities, and a hospital. The floor plates of its three identical 12-story towers offer flexibility in configuration, allowing for all-lab space, all-office space, or any combination of the two.
Function
The towers, each with a square plan measuring 34.2m x 34.2m and a structural module of 6.60m, allow for lab modules that are 3.15m wide, with 15cm reserved for partitions. The lab depth, illustrated on the sample floor plan as 8.25m, can extend up to 13m from the facade to the cores. The perimeter of the floor plate can be fitted out as either lab or office space, with appropriate room depths. The central area, the "dark middle," is suitable for support labs, freezer terminals, and technical rooms. A racetrack corridor runs between the daylit spaces along the perimeter and the dark rooms within the floor plate.
Two service cores are positioned on the facade at opposing sides of the floor plate.
Stacking
The towers feature 10 identical lab-ready floors, each with a 3.9m floor-to-floor height. The ground floor is slightly elevated and houses a café and other tenant amenities. Additionally, technical rooms are located on one floor below grade as well as on the top floor of the building.
Structure
The structure of the towers is primarily concrete, incorporating flat-plate cast-in-place slabs and core walls, along with prefab columns and exterior wall parapets. The structural grid measures 6.60m by 8.25m, with smaller exterior columns spaced on a 0.675m module. The typical floor-to-floor height throughout the towers is 3.90m.
Shafts
The building has two centralized riser zones packed into the stair and lift cores. Trunk ducts of each riser serve respective half-floors, with supply ducts generally placed along the exterior wall and exhaust ducts along the corridor on the inside of the floor plate.
Fitout
A 6.60m structural bay accommodates two lab modules, each 3.15m wide, with 30cm of width reserved for potential partitions. The labs are equipped with furniture 75cm deep and include one fume hood.
In the provided fitout example, the main labs extend 8.25m deep from the exterior wall to the column grid line. Lab support zones, separated by a 1.60m wide corridor, are positioned in the building's interior without daylight.
At the bottom of the sample floor, there are 3.15m wide offices, 5m deep, and collaborative spaces and open-plan offices, 7m deep.
Parti
A square floor plate with two service cores. One of the cores is split into two parts to create a lift lobby in between. Everything else is flexible: all leasable areas can be configured and hooked up as lab, office or any combination thereof. A racetrack corridor, built out as needed, loops around a windowless support block in the center.
Thoughts
The floor layout offers flexibility to accommodate any combination of main and support labs, as well as office and collaborative spaces.
The 6.60m structural grid and 3.90m floor-to-floor heights strike a good balance: just snug enough for lab spaces and a tad too generous for office use.
A 3.30m wide lab bay, minus 15cm for partitions, pairs well with 75cm deep lab furniture. However, 90cm deep furniture would leave an inadequate 1.35m aisle width. Additionally, 90cm deep fume hoods may protrude into the aisle, potentially posing a risk for less experienced lab users. The 3.90m floor-to-floor height provides an economical yet sufficient clear height of about 2.70m in the labs.
A 3.30m module results in an excessively large single office module, 10% wider than the large North American 10-foot standard (3.00m) and 20% wider than the 2.70m European norm. The 3.90m floor-to-floor height also leaves about half a meter of unused floor height on the office side of the floor.
Service cores positioned against the facade occupy space that could otherwise be utilized for areas benefiting from daylight.
Stats
The most recent of the three towers was completed in 2021.
The gross floor area of each floor is approximately 1,150m², with a net floor area of approximately 980m². Structural cores and shafts occupy approximately 125m² of each floor plate and do not include toilets and per-floor technical rooms seen as part of the user-specific fitout.
The total gross building area of one tower is approximately 15,000m².