Welcome to Club Lab: the Future of the Lab

Club Lab is a patent-pending innovation developed by Lacey & Saltykov Architects (London) and Andrei Koshelev (Zurich). It proposes a novel organization of functional elements within laboratory buildings, offering significantly more economical and flexible operational solutions compared to conventional schemes.

What issues does Club Lab address?

Lab buildings invariably incorporate an office component. From computer workstations for researchers to meeting spaces for collaborative work, offices must always be located near the lab. However, the lab and office spaces have completely different characteristics. Labs require greater floor-to-floor heights for horizontal distribution of building systems, higher air exchanges rates per hour, and stronger floor slabs, while offices do not. Despite their differences, labs and offices must be co-located.

The demand for office and meeting space within lab buildings is increasing. Collaborative exchanges between research groups are crucial for synergistic discovery, and computational approaches are claiming a larger part of research. This addition does not replace wet labs but adds to the functions of the lab building.

Labs themselves must be adaptable to accommodate various research activities. Ambient conditions in adjacent lab spaces must be separately and independently controllable, and the demand for scalability and replicability of services is growing. While facilities services aim for standardization and cost-cutting, researchers demand fast customization and flexibility.

Traditional low-slung lab buildings in suburban areas may become less common, especially in high-density, high-value urban markets. Commercial lab buildings are becoming the new high-end urban commodity workspace, and urban lab buildings are increasingly going high-rise. However, stacking more than eight or nine lab floors presents technical challenges, requiring new high-rise lab solutions.

Lab safety is an expanding requirement as society becomes increasingly risk-averse. Collaboration, flexibility, scalability, and high-rise construction all put additional pressure on lab safety.

Energy consumption is another critical consideration. Lab buildings can consume up to 10 times more energy than comparable office buildings. Therefore, reducing energy consumption in lab buildings is crucial for overall energy efficiency and environmental sustainability efforts. If we want to reduce energy consumption by buildings, labs are a good place to start.

How does Club Lab address these issues?

Club Lab offers a compact, economical, and scalable laboratory building solution, particularly advantageous for urban high-rise labs.

By arranging lab, office, and technical spaces within an ultra-compact envelope, Club Lab achieves the same amount of lab and office space in 85-90% of the building volume. This design reduces construction and operational costs, as well as energy consumption.

The floor plates of Club Lab allow maximum flexibility for reconfiguration and expansion of lab space. Its building systems solution enables custom-fitted, on-demand ambient lab conditions. Even as floors are stacked higher, Club Lab maintains remarkable efficiency, avoiding the progressive loss of floor space to riser shafts. This unique high-rise enabling solution allows Club Lab to continue stacking with increasing economy.

How does Club Lab work?

This LinkedIn article explains the technical aspects of Club Lab:

Club Lab at Future Labs Live

We showed Club Lab at Future Labs Live 2024 in Basel. You can download the presentation here:

For more information on Club Lab contact us at:

info@space4science.com