BOSTON – November 17, 2022 – Margulies Perruzzi (MP), one of New England’s most innovative architectural and interior design firms, announced today that its Founder and Principal, Marc Margulies, FAIA, LEED AP, has been named one of the Power 50: Movement Makers by the Boston Business Journal (BBJ). An annual list of Boston-area businesspeople who are making the biggest impact on the region, this year’s honorees were celebrated at an event on November 16 at Tuscan Kitchen in the Seaport. A special section of the BBJ’s print edition will feature the honorees on November 18.
Marc founded Margulies & Associates in 1988. Now known as Margulies Perruzzi (MP), Marc has grown the firm to one of New England’s top architectural and interior design firms, focusing on workplace, healthcare, science & technology, and real estate projects. MP was ranked #16 on the 2022 list of architectural firms published by the BBJ.
When it comes to shaping the city’s future, Marc’s influence goes beyond building design. He serves as president of the Wharf District Council, a nonprofit made up of businesses and residents on the downtown Boston waterfront. Those property owners represent the front line to address the flooding that’s occurring as climate change worsens. That subjects them to not only great risk, but also greater responsibilities. The actions they take to protect themselves from flooding will help the rest of downtown. Marc is spearheading an initiative among the council’s members on how to join forces to protect the coastline. To this end, they have created a Climate Resilience Task Force and commissioned a study to recommend options ranging from a network of barriers to elevating waterfront properties to hold back rising Boston Harbor waters.
Marc believes passionately in the importance of using his resources, both as an architect and concerned citizen, to create a better community. For many years, Marc’s personal philanthropic focus has been the issue of homelessness in Greater Boston. Marc has been involved for more than 30 years with Heading Home, Inc., one of the Boston area’s largest agencies devoted to helping the homeless. He has served as both volunteer and Board Chair, applying his architectural skills and experience to advance the goal of ending homelessness. Recently, Marc has been working with the Massachusetts Housing & Shelter Alliance to develop modular micro-housing units in the program called “A Place to Live.” Working with a variety of agencies (most notably the South Middlesex Opportunity Council (SMOC) in Worcester), MHSA has advocated for the construction of buildings of 18 to 24 units that are purpose-built for adults who are homeless or at-risk of homelessness.
Marc is a regular speaker at CoreNet, IFMA, CBA, and other industry organizations whose missions include educating those involved in corporate and institutional real estate about important advancements in workplace design. His involvement with these organizations, through speaking and leadership, has focused on elevating the importance of the architect’s voice in conversations that increasingly involve many competing specialists.
Leasing lab space in the metro Boston commercial real estate market – one of the top three in the country for life sciences – can present a journey into the unknown for companies emerging from the incubator stage or any growing company not familiar with the construction process. On any trip into unfamiliar territory, a road map is a requisite tool for helping a traveler steer clear of wrong turns, unexpected hazards, and costly detours. For companies seeking the most ideal space and lease terms for their lab facilities, market knowledge and early programming are the roadmaps to a successful project.
Market Intelligence
Cresa Boston’s Q2 2022 market report on life sciences juxtaposed low vacancy rates in Cambridge with higher rates between Route 128, the inner suburbs, and Boston. Class A building rents in Boston and Cambridge averaged $100 to $125 per square foot, but lab space is more than twice as expensive to fit out in an existing building than office space. Cresa also advised: “With occupancy delays becoming increasingly common, upfront due diligence on buildings, infrastructure, and the team are critical in staying on schedule and budget.” That’s precisely where lab programming and planning come into play.
Basic Program Information
A commercial real estate broker obtains basic information from prospective tenants to narrow down available options during the site search. This includes location, approximate square footage based on full-time employees, future growth, and desired building infrastructure and amenities. Understanding square footage and amenities are important because although the tenant will only occupy the usable square footage, it is the rentable square footage – a percentage of the property’s common areas – that is used to calculate the lease amount. Many times, lab architects are asked to do preliminary lab layouts or a test fit to validate the client’s space needs and to confirm the client’s overall program and space requirements.
Extending beyond preliminary test fits, lab programming can help determine the client’s needs regarding location within the building, sometimes requiring the lower floor levels of a building, ensuring construction type classification and building infrastructure will meet the client’s needs and comply with all applicable federal, state, and local codes, regulations, and ordinances.
Unique Programming for Lab Space
Planning for lab versus office space is different for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the use and storage of hazardous materials and chemicals. Due to the nature of the work and type of equipment, labs also require increased security and flexible design; place higher demands on HVAC, electrical, plumbing, emergency power, and structural systems; and need generous plenum space for ductwork and piping, requiring higher floor-to-floor heights.
During programming, the lab planner and/or architect will collect and analyze data from the client and specific end users that will not only provide a foundation for the lab layout with respect to square footage, adjacencies, equipment and furniture types and sizes. It will also establish lab and support space standards, identify building system performance criteria, and validate the owner’s existing facilities program strategies.
Timing is Everything
Whether a start-up moving on from incubator space or an established company looking to expand, the time to partner with an experienced lab design professional is as soon as the need for new, more, or different space arises. Identifying the client’s real estate needs is the key to finding the right building and leasing the appropriate type and amount of space necessary to meet their short and long-term business goals.
Total 2021 billings may include international projects in some instances. Mass. architectural billings refers to billings for architectural projects only performed by the firm’s Mass. office(s) for projects in Mass. only. Total 2021 architectural billings refers to billings for all architectural projects performed by the firm, in Mass. and elsewhere.
Control areas are a tool to compartmentalize a lab building so that the amount of chemicals being used is code compliant, and if a fire occurs, its spread can be minimized. Multiple control areas are desirable in both new and existing buildings, but this can be achieved in numerous ways.
When a life science company is looking for space, they should work with their environmental health and safety (EH&S) vendor to develop a list of chemicals that will be used in their laboratory. A wet lab with hazardous and/or combustible chemicals and gases must be evaluated by an architect for such factors as the availability of space on the lowest floors of a building, construction type classification, sprinkler and/or fire suppression systems and the ability to comply with the National Fire Protection Agency Codes.
There are three distinct codes that need to be considered when designing control areas, including the International Building Code (IBC), the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 45, and NFPA 30.
With IBC, the enclosed area is a control area defined as “spaces within a building where quantities of hazardous materials not exceeding the maximum allowable quantities per control area are stored, dispensed, used, or handled.” NFPA 45, “Standard on Fire Protection for Laboratories Using Chemicals,” is the industry’s comprehensive source for requirements for the fire-safe design and operation of laboratories to avoid injury to lab occupants. It outlines the maximum allowable quantities of liquids and gases, as well as requirements for ventilating systems and chemical fume hoods.
The enclosed area is the laboratory itself, and is divided into hazard levels A, B, C and D based upon the amount of chemicals that are in use. NFPA 30, “Flammable and Combustible Liquids Code,” provides fundamental safeguards for the storage, handling, and use of flammable and combustible liquids and, in short, includes a system for categorizing liquids as being flammable or combustible.
Diminishing Chemical Use on Upper Floors
With new buildings, determining the construction type (IBC Types I-V) dictates the control area strategy, which is based on the required fire resistance rating and separation distance for occupancy groups B and H, under which most research labs are categorized. In modern lab buildings, where each floor typically gets at least one control area, the amount of allowable chemicals decreases for each story above the ground floor per code due to the increased difficulty of access by the fire department.
Above the seventh floor, control areas are limited to 5 percent of the chemicals that can be used on the first floor. In past projects designed by our firm, providing a two-hour fire rating to the floors and the supporting structure has been successful in providing the maximum possible number of control areas. This provides the most flexible control area strategy which benefits both tenants and landlords who want buildings that will serve as laboratories for the long term.
For an existing building renovation, a careful review of existing conditions, including as-built drawings and invasive partial demolition, is required to confirm that the floors are rated to allow for separate control areas on adjacent floors. When the floors aren’t rated – this includes the gap often found at the edge of the floor slab – there are alternatives to consider. The gap at the edge of the floors can be infilled to create a two- hour rating and add extra fireproofing to columns and beams.
Another alternative is to create three distinct rated storage rooms on the first floor of the building. The latter alternative, which takes advantage of the higher capacity of chemicals permitted to be stored at lower levels, treats the rest of the building as a single control area, thus limiting the amount of chemicals a tenant can use. Tenants switch chemicals in the building between their storage area and laboratory as they need to use them.
In either new buildings or building renovations, the chemical usage of tenants needs to be monitored on an ongoing basis. Tenants are responsible for securing chemical use licenses annually and building owners must maintain a chemical use permit that matches their tenants’ licenses.
Boston Scores is a non-profit group that provides after school programs for local youth in grades K-12. These programs are centered around soccer activities and team-based educational enrichment programs.
For several years, Margulies Perruzzi has been involved with Boston Scores as a participant in their annual Scores Cup soccer tournament at Gillette Stadium. The tournament allows companies like ours an opportunity to extend our team building outside the office while also supporting a great cause. This year, I had the opportunity to take over from longtime team MP captain, Rui Ribeiro. And while our team didn’t take home the trophy, we still had a great time out on the turf, seeing Gillette from a different perspective.
MP Soccer Team at Boston Scores’ Scores Cup at Gillette Stadium.
Beyond participating in the annual Scores Cup, we have been lucky to also work with Boston Scores. For almost five years, Boston Scores has been searching for a home for their youth programs and staff offices, and we’ve been proud to be able to assist them in those efforts. After searching and studying several different properties, Executive Director John Maconga was able to guide the organization into a partnership with the Salesian Boys and Girls Club of East Boston. The existing building will house the staff offices for the organization, as well as provide a large homework help space and coach training room. We will also be placing several high-end soccer fields nearby, complete with restrooms, a playground, an outdoor classroom, a walking path, and parking.
When I asked John recently what this means for his organization, he told me, “This project will enable Boston Scores to more than double the number of youth served while enhancing the quality of instruction we provide, deepening our commitment to the youth of East Boston and the City at large.” He added, “We look forward to deepening our connections with the East Boston community.”
Rendering depicting the front exterior view of Boston Scores’ new headquarters.
Other improvements that the project will bring to the community include adding an elevator to the existing Boys and Girls Club building to provide inclusive access to all three floors of the building. The parking lot will also be reconstructed to provide more environmentally friendly stormwater management and increased activity spaces for the area youth.
Rendering of a field providing increased activity space for Boston Scores’ youth programs.
It has been an absolute pleasure working with John and his team at Boston Scores on such a worthwhile project, and we look forward to competing in future Scores Cup events!
“Housing First” is a proven strategy in the nationwide fight to solve the seemingly intractable problem of homelessness. People are assisted to locate housing first, without preconditions around compliance, and then are engaged to address other issues in their lives once they have the stability of a home.
For “Housing First” to work, however, there must be a sufficient stock of housing for people with very low incomes. Though the causes of homelessness are myriad, one of the major propellants has been gentrification of low-cost housing and the virtual elimination of “flophouses” – places where those in need of shelter could stay inexpensively without long-term commitment.
While many individuals who are homeless long term may have disabling conditions such as mental health issues or substance use disorder, the overarching issue for all people experiencing homelessness is they do not have adequate financial resources to afford housing. It is almost impossible to provide support for them with stabilizing their lives if they do not have a safe, affordable and respectful place to live.
A Modern Successor to Triple-Deckers
Enter the concept of modular micro-housing units in the program that the Massachusetts Housing & Shelter Alliance (MHSA) calls “A Place to Live.” Working with a variety of agencies, most notably the South Middlesex Opportunity Council in Worcester, MHSA has advocated for the construction of buildings of 18 to24 units that are purpose-built for adults who are homeless or at-risk of homelessness.
The “A Place to Live” building looks much like traditional triple-deckers or the contextual architectural equivalent. These small, efficient buildings can fit onto vacant lots available throughout urban areas, allowing new residents to become reintegrated into their neighborhoods close to public transportation, near support services and convenient to shopping and education.
These micro-units, usually about 250 square feet, can be designed to meet all current code and accessibility requirements of the municipal, state and federal funding agencies. The best part for residents is the units are full-size studios with a kitchenette, private bathroom and sleeping space – the kind of spaces that people with lived experiences of homelessness say they prefer over old-style rooming houses. The buildings also contain spaces for private and group counseling, common laundry and bike storage facilities.
Comparative cost analysis of modular versus traditional construction clearly shows that for this type of project, the modular approach costs 30 percent less and takes half as much time to build.
Overcoming Hurdles to Construction
Modular micro-units are becoming more common elsewhere in the U.S. and around the world. Given the clear case for them, why haven’t we seen a proliferation of these micro-units around Massachusetts? There are several reasons that point to challenges to be overcome:
Zoning policies for multifamily residential buildings almost always require providing a large number of parking spaces, which drives up the cost and limits the use of available land for housing. As few of the target homeless residents have cars, and the sites are selected for their adjacency to public transportation, the parking requirement becomes an unnecessary burden.
Public funding agencies are challenged to approve non-traditional procurement processes. Collaboration with modular manufacturers is essential to these projects; each factory has its own technologies and systems that allow it to be most efficient. These partnerships with manufacturers need to be put in place early, often before funds are awarded. The old “Design-Bid-Build” approach is not the best way to take advantage of modern or innovative modular construction processes.
Purchasing land for the construction of housing for people who are homeless is fraught with challenges. The timeframe for securing an agreement to buy the land, applying for and receiving funding, obtaining neighborhood approval (or surviving neighborhood opposition), and finally closing on the purchase of the land often takes years. Few property owners want to sell their land to an agency that may or may not be able to close for several years. Clearly, we need a better way to identify and obtain ownership of appropriate sites than battling restrictive land-use barriers and a tight real estate development market.
Homelessness has become a national crisis, and we have a moral imperative to come up with solutions. Modular micro-units are one solution that meets this urgent need and makes economic sense. Let’s address the barriers in order to create such housing now. There is a place for everyone to participate and support the “A Place to Live” concept to help our most needy neighbors without housing.
There is a bit of a Renaissance mindset in all of us architects. Many architects come to this field through various paths and have landed here after other pursuits and academic degrees. I was a painter as far back as age 12, went on to music, ultimately graduating from Berklee College of Music with a degree in Jazz Composition and Arranging, and finally, became an architect.
I feel that successful architects are endlessly curious about many forms of self-expression. That is why we gravitate toward the Arts.
What we ultimately do is tell a story, and that story is the element that holds all the various parts of a building’s design together as a cohesive whole. But how do we achieve that story in the language of architecture? It’s important to consider how other artists are successful in telling a story in the language of their own art discipline. This is where boundless curiosity comes into play.
Some ideas to consider are:
How do writers tell a story?
How do movie directors tell a story?
How do sculptors tell a story?
How do painters tell a story?
How do musicians tell a story?
When designing, architects take in many factors that will influence the story of a space or building. For example, the renovation or repositioning of a historic building will have a different design narrative than the blank slate of a new ground-up building.
But most of all, we strive to tell the story of our clients; their culture, identity, and aspirations as an organization. As no two works of art are the same, the stories of our clients are unique, and in turn, so are the aesthetics, functions, and spatial requirements of each project.
The more we absorb how other artists navigate through their work, the greater and richer our architecture ideas are informed.
Paul is an Associate Principal and Partner at Margulies Perruzzi, responsible for many of the renderings coming out of the office. His spare time is spent making sculpture, combining his love for painting and architecture with his improvisational jazz background. You can find Paul’s sculptures on Pinterest.
The impact of a global pandemic on the complex, interconnected nature of supply-chains has quite literally brought home to us how fragile that infrastructure is in today’s global economy. While there are signs of recovery, it is impossible to predict the availability of commonplace products, let alone highly specialized building materials and equipment. This is particularly evident when owners, architects, engineers, and contractors are consumed by the frenetic pace of delivering life sciences projects.
In this perplexing new world order, architects must communicate, adapt, and respond more diligently than ever before. Gone are the good old days when specifying a product and receiving it on time was taken for granted. An apt example of how science and technology projects are impacted now is the delivery of essential mechanical and electrical systems equipment such as rooftop HVAC units, variable air volume (VAV) boxes, and generators. Even before the pandemic, these were considered long-lead items. Today, that list has grown to include such components as variable fan drives, electrical panels, lighting, glazing, specialty ceilings, lab gases, quick connect valves, lab furniture, and more. We are also seeing lead times become a moving target even after an ordered product has been given a ship date and tracking number. This can wreak havoc on construction scheduling and cost, stranding crews on site without the materials they need to complete the job as specified.
When facing such a predicament, an architect has two choices: Either accept information given as indisputable and move on, or commit to communication at multiple levels to connect the key players and develop a creative solution. On a recent life sciences project to design a relocating lab facility and its administrative and support spaces, we chose the latter course of action, because failure was not an option. Prior to March 2020, people who had been doing their jobs quietly and efficiently in the background without an architect’s intervention were suddenly integral to an all-hands-on-deck effort. For this lab fit-out, where a key piece of electrical equipment was unavailable by the deadline, we forged strong connections between manufacturing plant managers, distribution centers, and the electrical engineer and contractor to brainstorm different combinations of off-the-shelf products that would take its place and temporarily bridge the lead time gap so the owner could take occupancy as scheduled.
The results of such deliberate communication are measurable. Had we done nothing, an eight-month schedule would have been extended by five months. But in this case, through intensive coordination, the project team was able to re-engineer and redesign the component on the fly and shorten the delay to one month. Our MacGyvered solution allowed the owner to be up and running on day one, and the team is prepared to revisit the project once the originally specified product becomes available.
Although product bottlenecks are beginning to ease slightly, until the supply-chain fully recovers, we foresee owners, project teams, manufacturers, and shippers working in tandem as never before to keep the wheels of commerce moving in the right direction.
BOSTON – June 21, 2022 – Margulies Perruzzi (MP), one of New England’s most innovative architectural and interior design firms, announced today that it has named Kerrie Julian, RA, LEED AP, CDT as the new director of science strategy. Reporting to Dan Perruzzi, AIA, LEED AP, principal and partner, Kerrie will be responsible for lending her expertise to projects, managing and recruiting staff, and developing new client relationships.
“Kerrie brings excellent design, construction, and project management skills in addition to exceptional knowledge of research and development spaces, lab equipment and utilities, and control areas,” said Dan. “She has spent the past 15 years focused on life science, biotech, biopharma, and laboratory projects and will be a valuable addition to our growing science studio.”
With over 25 years of experience in project programming, detailed design, and construction administration, Kerrie worked on a wide variety of projects in the Greater Boston area, including Boston Heart Diagnostics, Biogen, Quest Diagnostics, Smith and Nephew, Frequency Therapeutics, Triplet Therapeutics, J&J/DePuy, EQT Exeter, Pfizer, and Moderna.
Kerrie earned a Bachelor of Architecture from the Wentworth Institute of Technology and completed a Lab Safety Seminar at the Harvard School of Public Health. She is VP of Alumni Relations on the Wentworth Institute of Technology Alumni Board and co-chair of the Wentworth golf committee.
With an inspirational science portfolio, Margulies Perruzzi specializes in life sciences, medical devices, research and development (R&D), and manufacturing. Margulies Perruzzi has worked with a wide range of industry leaders, including Siemens, Nuvera Fuel Cells, Millipore Sigma, Philips, Metabolix, Boston Scientific, and many others.
MP was excited to attend the annual SMPS Boston Awards Gala on June 8th, 2022 at the Boston Harbor Hotel. We congratulate all our A/E/C industry marketing peers awarded for their past year’s marketing and marketing communications achievements. We were thrilled to be awarded first place in the Holiday Piece category!
