San Antonio's Big Lab Project

By Rob Patterson

Biotech, Sciences and Engineering Building to Raises Research Bar at UTSA

The new Biotechnology Sciences and Engineering Building III at the University of Texas at San Antonio was designed to encourage and support multidisciplinary research within a state-of-the-art facility.

"UTSA is positioning itself as a tier-one research university, and we have the need to hire faculty and build research space," said Charles Lampey, director of facilities planning and development for the university. "Right now we have faculty who don't even have offices. So this building will take care of current and future needs of the research presence on campus."

The facility is slated for completion in June.

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The 227,000-sq.-ft. building will house offices and teaching and research laboratories for the university's colleges of science and engineering. Its research functions and multidisciplinary mission mandated a high degree of internal complexity within the structure.

The BS&E III building has a $60 million construction cost. With its high-tech equipment inside, the total project price tag will be $83 million.

The reinforced-concrete structure rises four floors above ground with a sublevel and crawl space underneath. The concrete pour was 16,537 cu. yds.

The first two levels feature a Texas Cordoba cream limestone veneer. The third level exterior is plaster, and a glass curtain wall wraps the top floor.

The building is capped with a sloped structural-steel frame roof clad with red-clay tiles. "It pretty well follows the master plan and the materials we've been using here on campus for the past five years or so with new buildings," said Bob Evans, resident construction manager in San Antonio for the University of Texas System.

Because the building is built into a hillside, workers faced their first difficulties when excavation began in June 2003. "The site falls from the north to the south some 20 ft. through solid rock, and it took quite an effort to get all that rock excavated," Evans said.

The location does help the structure blend into its surroundings. "It's far and away the biggest building on campus," said Cynthia Walston, lead laboratory planner for FKP Architects of Houston. "We didn't want it to totally overpower all of its neighbors. So we built it into the hillside so one of the levels disappears into the hill."

John Farrell, FKP's director of educational facilities, said the building has three levels that mostly line up with the levels of the other buildings on campus. "The glass curtain wall around the top level makes it appear to float slightly," he added. "We think it will help it look not as massive and ponderous a neighbor."

The on-campus site limited the laydown space for general contractor Vaughn Construction Co. of San Antonio. "We have our footprint and maybe 50 ft. to 60 ft. around us and that's it," said Vaughn's project manager Bob Aniol. "So everything has to be scheduled and brought in as we need it."

Only 20 parking spaces were available for a crew of up to 350 workers on the project, prompting a creative solution. "The different trades have given donations to the nearby churches to use their parking lots," Aniol added.

Linking BS&E III to the university's master plant at the other end of the campus was also daunting. "We had to run chilled water pipe from the north side of campus underneath three buildings while classes were going on and trench a 400-ft. tunnel," Aniol said.

An intricate HVAC system provides a single-pass air-ventilation system to the research labs with 100 percent supply and exhaust. "It has twice as much ductwork as your average building," Aniol said. "There are two massive mechanical rooms in the sublevel with 14 air handlers."

The sublevel also contains vibration-sensitive research equipment. The solution was to sit some mechanical units on slab on grade and others on structural steel mezzanines. "They are internally isolated and sit on isolation pads," Aniol said.

The basement also contains water-treatment equipment to serve lab usage and treat waste. Because BS&E III sits atop the environmentally sensitive Edwards Aquifer, Lampey said special means of filtering and retention were installed.

Another mechanical penthouse underneath the roof helps ventilate fumes from the hooded labs on the fourth floor. "That way it's a very short run to get all the fume-hood exhaust up and out," Evans said.

Walston said the university's regents were concerned about exhaust stacks from the research building being visible. "The red-clay tile roof really helps there," she added. "We have an opening in the roof that the exhaust stacks come up through at the necessary height."

The mechanical and plumbing feeds are also designed to be adaptable. "The university wanted maximum flexibility in the mechanical systems to be able to change a biology lab into a chemistry lab," Walston said.

The design made the lab modules flexible, Lampey added. "We even have faculty offices that could be future labs," he said. "Later on we could build an office building at less dollars per sq. ft. and convert offices to labs."

A vivarium for holding live animals on the third floor features advanced cage washing and watering systems. "It has its own special piping with tanks in the sublevel," Aniol said. Plywood and expanded metal behind the drywall are employed to maintain the controlled environment and contain any animals that may get loose.

A bridge from the third floor will connect with an existing bridge that in turn connects with two existing science buildings, providing a secure pathway for animal transport. "We're going to bring all the steel material out and erect the bridge on the ground," Aniol said. The 75-ft. assembly will then be lifted by crane onto 32-ft. piers.

The interior was designed to serve the building's multidisciplinary mission. Faculty offices are clustered on the first floor along a central corridor to unite the various departments. A ground-floor cafe with an outdoor patio also encourages interaction.

"A real focus of this building was to create an environment that would foster collaboration," Walston said. "One of the things we did to encourage groups from different disciplines to meet each other was put a four-story atrium with a monumental stair in the center of the building to encourage chance meetings."