Research & Development Facility

Duluth, GA

Ciba Vision is one of the largest medical device companies in the world and has its headquarters, R&D facilities and main manufacturing facilities located in the North Atlanta suburbs. In August 2010, Ciba Vision commissioned Lord, Aeck & Sargent to prepare a report for the consolidation and potential renovation of the R&D facility at their Duluth, Georgia campus. The report included: an inventory of laboratory space utilized by each department; options for the relocation of approximately 7,000 square feet of research space from a remote facility (JCE); and design options to renovate the entire R&D facility.

The first phase is the relocation and consolidation of the remote operations into the R&D facility. In order to start the process, the design team conducted an inventory of both the JCE facility and the R&D building to account for square footage, number of occupants, linear feet of casework, fume hoods and floor mounted equipment per research space.

Using this space inventory as a guide, a consolidation plan was developed. This first renovation/ consolidation phase will be based on a new casework system, new lab organization structure, new finishes and limited additions for transparency and collaboration. These new concepts will then be carried through all renovation phases.

In addition to the consolidation efforts, the design team created two separate options for the complete renovation of the R&D facility; one option would keep the basic central service corridor intact while creating larger, more open laboratories organized internally by function; and the second option eliminates the central corridor concept thus creating larger open laboratories and dedicated lab support areas for fume hoods, tissue culture and other specialized research and equipment needs. Both of these options address building code updates and infrastructure upgrades for the entire facility, and are designed to be implemented in phases.

Credits and Links

research, fume hoods, tissue culture, collaboration