The renovation to Signify’s Burlington office location consisted of over 55,000 square feet of useable area spread over three floors of an existing building. Due to industry-wide procurement constraints and the limited availability of space to work in, the project was completed in an overall phased approach. Margulies Perruzzi completed early bid packages to assist with long lead items and coordinated a phased construction plan to assist the construction management and client team. The majority of the area was completed and fully functional by Phase 1, allowing employees to move into the space and start working. The remaining support space and main visitor reception area was completed approximately three months later.
The Signify Burlington location consisted of research and development work areas as well as administrative and customer support staff spaces. The mixture of functions in the office space created planning and engineering challenges. Working with our engineering team, the client department leads, and drawing on our expansive workplace planning experience, we were able to create an elegant space that provides efficient workflow for employees.
Bayer Healthcare (now Siemens) moved its blood-gas analyzing R&D division into a new building to aggregate its disbursed operations into one new facility. Complete with labs, workspace, training, and a customer briefing center, this building was an important part of the company’s focus on the design of innovative testing equipment.
As with many labs, a key component was the creation of a centralized services corridor that housed common gasses, a tank farm, ROD distribution, and electrical distribution. This core area reduced redundancy of equipment, increased flexibility over time, and allowed efficient service and maintenance of critical infrastructure.
Metabolix is a developer of biopolymer technology, essentially creating plant-based plastics that will biodegrade. Margulies Perruzzi has worked with Metabolix on multiple projects. Interior renovations were completed for their office space in Lowell, and for their headquarters at 21 Eerie Street in Cambridge, which included significant branding. Margulies Perruzzi also completed space planning for their biotech plant, and research lab at One Kendall Square in Cambridge.
The use of a flexible laboratory paradigm was critical to the success of these planning efforts. Because the technology is emerging, rapid change to both processes and equipment is essential. Margulies Perruzzi achieved this by designing around flexible connections and modular equipment units.
As a part of the renovation and expansion of Boston Scientific’s Global Headquarters, the Urology division’s R&D labs and office space underwent a complete transformation. Consolidating multiple labs that over time had become scattered throughout the building, the new state-of-the art labs are flexible, efficient, and adjacent to the researcher’s workspaces. Transparency into the labs facilitates monitoring and interaction between personnel while also allowing natural light to brighten spaces that had previously felt cut off from the exterior.
An important tenet of the design was the flexible infrastructure. Universal lighting, access to power and gasses, and mobile benches allow researchers to quickly and easily reconfigure as needed. This more “agile” approach to R&D increases innovation and productivity by removing the barriers fixed layouts may present, and by facilitating the sharing of expensive equipment to reduce duplication.
