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Intellectual Collisions

The new 133,500-square-foot (12,400-square-meter) facility unites more than 150 employees from two previously disparate components of Southern California's FDA: the Pacific Regional Laboratory and the Los Angeles District Office. The lab's responsibilities include testing and approval of medical devices, pesticide chemistry, and microbiology; the office coordinates inspection, compliance, and administrative activities for Southern California and all of Arizona.

Programmatically, this unification of functions translates into a wide array of labs, offices, workstations, conference rooms, training rooms, a library, and the requisite storage.

Contrary to the typical separation of laboratory and office departments, one of the FDA's main objectives was to acknowledge its evolving institutional culture by providing a new approach for office and lab adjacencies.

Hence, the facility is broken down into three wings, each with multiple zones — modular labs in the south, open office space in the middle, public areas in the north — connected by a rational system of pathways. But all the components necessarily work together to create the holistic entity that encourages what FDA district director Alonza Cruse calls "a dynamic flow of people and ideas."

Three main arteries run the length of the building, linked with periodic cross-connections. The northernmost path is the most visible, open to the floor above; it embraces the verdant wetlands through its curving glass curtain wall.

The middle corridor, as the main employee route through the building, both connects and divides the lab and office spaces on either side. Meanwhile, the southernmost corridor links the labs to each other, providing a wide sanitized path for specimens and equipment to move freely without interference or contamination.

Each wing of the building is rectilinear but angled slightly in plan relative to the others, following a natural ridge bounding the adjacent wetlands. The abutting angles of the solid concrete labs create niches on the periphery of the neighboring open office areas. At these "knuckles," strategic placement of comfortable chairs with attached worktables encourages the desired "intellectual collisions" between employees of the disparate departments.

Innovative Design

The initial decision to integrate program spaces acted as a springboard for other innovations, which helped the facility earn high honors in the R&D Magazine 2004 Laboratory of the Year competition. In fact, R&D editor Tim Studt singled out the FDA at Irvine facility "for its dramatic design and innovation characteristics."

Ted Hyman, a ZGF partner, noted that at a cost of $40 million and a respectable ratio of net area to gross area, this is "the least expensive lab the FDA has built." Considering that this price includes security upgrades and redesigns following the 2001 terrorist attacks, this is no small achievement.

Hyman cited the use of poured concrete walls, serving as both structure and finish, as a major cost saver as well as aesthetic asset — though the proportions of the punched openings in these concrete walls also create the least interesting facades and muddy the otherwise clear diagram of the building. The concrete structure of the labs is the base from which the office component hangs, thus negating the need for additional structural steel and creating the curved curtain wall without the conventional structural gymnastics.

To achieve solidity in the labs and transparency in the public areas, individual office organization had to be rethought as well. Instead of being strung along the building edges, the offices are grouped in pods with their backs to the cross-connections between the labs and the curtain wall.

This arrangement allows sunlight to penetrate deep into the building: past the open office areas, through the glass dividing walls, and into the labs themselves. The exhilarating lighting effect is intensified by the tentative but effective use of color on the office blocks — a first for ZGF, which typically applies a starker palette.   >>>

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The sleek glass north wall faces a wetland at FDA at Irvine, by Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership and HDR, Inc. Photo: Nick Merrick/ Hedrich Blessing The expansive glass curtain wall glows in the twilight. Photo: Nick Merrick/ Hedrich Blessing Exterior gathering spaces are as integral to the design as the interior programmed spaces. Photo: Nick Merrick/ Hedrich Blessing Playful interactions abound between concrete and perforated, corrugated copper panels. Photo: Nick Merrick/ Hedrich Blessing Site plan, FDA at Irvine. Image: ZGF Building section, FDA at Irvine. Image: ZGF Lower level floor plan. Image: ZGF Upper level floor plan. Image: ZGF   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.