HKS Architects, Inc., a national architectural firm with 28 U.S. and international offices, has formed the HKS Science & Technology practice.
Specializing in the planning and design of highly technical building types, HKS’s Science & Technology practice offers the broadest range of services available to the academic and biomedical research, biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical device community, including laboratory programming, planning and design, strategic science planning and laboratory equipment planning.
“We know that the continuum of new science and emerging technologies is evolving with ever-increasing momentum,” said Ralph Hawkins, president and CEO of HKS, Inc. “Offering science and technology services to our clients is part of HKS’s strategy to provide the most comprehensive services to meet their constantly changing and evolving needs.”
H. Michael Smith, AIA, LEED AP, senior vice president, is HKS’s National Science & Technology Practice Leader. With more than 27 years of experience in a wide range of renovation, adaptive reuse and new construction projects, Smith has focused his entire career on the design of science and technology building types. Working for clients in the corporate, institutional, academic and government market sectors, he has directed, managed, programmed and designed many notable projects, including academic and biomedical teaching and research laboratories, biotechnology and pharmaceutical research and production facilities, cleanrooms for microelectronics and medical device manufacture, and animal research facilities, among others.
For the past decade, Smith has held principal-level, science-practice leadership positions at some of the nation’s largest architectural firms and has been responsible for the development of such notable science buildings as the Wallis Annenberg Research Center at the House Research Institute in Los Angeles, Calif.; the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Cancer Immunotherapeutics and Tumor Immunology Building at the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, Calif.; the Donald P. Shiley Center for Science & Technology at the University of San Diego in San Diego, Calif.; and the Dana & David Dornsife Cognitive Neuroscience Imaging Center at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Calif.
Demonstrating the HKS Science & Technology practice’s commitment to achieving excellence in science and technology facilities design, the firm acquired world-renowned laboratory planning firm Earl Walls Associates, which will be rebranded as Earl Walls Consultancy, a division of HKS. With more than 2,500 laboratories to its credit, totaling over 200 million gross square feet, Earl Walls Associates grew from the 1962 collaboration among Dr. Jonas Salk, architect Louis I. Kahn and founder Earl Walls. Together they designed the Salk Institute, which established new milestones for laboratory facilities design. For the past five decades, Earl Walls Associates was integral to the development and innovation of many of the world’s modern laboratory planning concepts, including 22 awarded projects in R&D Magazine’s “Laboratory of the Year” competition.
Ken DeBoer and Ned Michalowski lead the Earl Walls Consultancy, based in San Diego, Calif. DeBoer, with 37 years of experience, is a programmer and planner with a complete understanding of the technical issues involved in highly complex laboratories and their support systems. His portfolio includes facilities for numerous government and academic institutions, ranging from sophisticated national core facilities to instructional laboratories for community colleges. More than 25 years ago, DeBoer began his laboratory planning career working with Earl Walls.
Michalowski has gained varied experience in the programming and design of laboratory facilities for the federal government, academia, private sector and institutional research. He joined Earl Walls in 1985 and has extensive experience providing strategic science planning, programming and design for numerous projects of various sizes, types and complexity. His projects have won awards including R&D Magazine's 1995 “Laboratory of the Year” for Ciba-Geigy's Life Sciences Building.
“DNA genetic coding didn’t exist 20 years ago,” said DeBoer. “Today, scientists are reinventing science as new methods and technologies become available. In turn, we must design facilities to accommodate both existing and future technologies. We speak the language of scientists, offering a distinct blend of technical knowledge and design creativity.”
Examples of innovative science and technology projects include:
- University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center Clinical Research Building, Houston, Texas
- University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Biomedical Research Center, Little Rock, Arkansas
- University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Clements Advanced Medical Imaging Center, Dallas, Texas
- Brooke Army Medical Center, Institute of Surgical Research, Fort Sam Houston, Texas
- Utah State University, Widtsoe Hall Chemistry Building, Logan, Utah
- Instituto de Diagnóstico y Referencia Epidemiológicos (InDRE), Infectious Disease Laboratories, Mexico City, Mexico
- The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California
- National Institutes of Health, Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center, Bethesda, Maryland
- Ciba Geigy Pharmaceuticals, Life Sciences Building, Summit, New Jersey
- National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Advanced Measurement Laboratory, Gaithersburg, Maryland
- Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation, La Jolla, California
- University of Alabama, Shelby Hall Interdisciplinary Science Building, Tuscaloosa, Alabama
- Pacific Northwest Laboratories, Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, Richland, Washington
- University of Wisconsin, Microbial Sciences Building, Madison, Wisconsin
“Science and technology facilities should inspire creativity and innovation, foster collaboration among colleagues and peers, attract and retain the best and brightest talent, and effectively represent an institution’s desired image to the public,” said Smith. “I am passionate about our work and committed to delivering facilities for science that meet the highest expectations of our clients, while respecting their time and budget constraints.” BD+C
Related Stories
| Oct 12, 2010
Guardian Building, Detroit, Mich.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Special Recognition. The relocation and consolidation of hundreds of employees from seven departments of Wayne County, Mich., into the historic Guardian Building in downtown Detroit is a refreshing tale of smart government planning and clever financial management that will benefit taxpayers in the economically distressed region for years to come.
| Oct 12, 2010
Richmond CenterStage, Richmond, Va.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Bronze Award. The Richmond CenterStage opened in 1928 in the Virginia capital as a grand movie palace named Loew’s Theatre. It was reinvented in 1983 as a performing arts center known as Carpenter Theatre and hobbled along until 2004, when the crumbling venue was mercifully shuttered.
| Oct 12, 2010
University of Toledo, Memorial Field House
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Memorial Field House, once the lovely Collegiate Gothic (ca. 1933) centerpiece (along with neighboring University Hall) of the University of Toledo campus, took its share of abuse after a new athletic arena made it redundant, in 1976. The ultimate insult occurred when the ROTC used it as a paintball venue.
| Oct 12, 2010
Owen Hall, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Mich.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Officials at Michigan State University’s East Lansing Campus were concerned that Owen Hall, a mid-20th-century residence facility, was no longer attracting much interest from its target audience, graduate and international students.
| Oct 12, 2010
Gartner Auditorium, Cleveland Museum of Art
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Gartner Auditorium was originally designed by Marcel Breuer and completed, in 1971, as part of his Education Wing at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Despite that lofty provenance, the Gartner was never a perfect music venue.
| Oct 12, 2010
Cell and Genome Sciences Building, Farmington, Conn.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Administrators at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington didn’t think much of the 1970s building they planned to turn into the school’s Cell and Genome Sciences Building. It’s not that the former toxicology research facility was in such terrible shape, but the 117,800-sf structure had almost no windows and its interior was dark and chopped up.
| Oct 12, 2010
The Watch Factory, Waltham, Mass.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards — Gold Award. When the Boston Watch Company opened its factory in 1854 on the banks of the Charles River in Waltham, Mass., the area was far enough away from the dust, dirt, and grime of Boston to safely assemble delicate watch parts.
| Oct 12, 2010
Cuyahoga County Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, Cleveland, Ohio
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Gold Award. The Cuyahoga County Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument was dedicated on the Fourth of July, 1894, to honor the memory of the more than 9,000 Cuyahoga County veterans of the Civil War.
| Oct 12, 2010
Building 13 Naval Station, Great Lakes, Ill.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Gold Award. Designed by Chicago architect Jarvis Hunt and constructed in 1903, Building 13 is one of 39 structures within the Great Lakes Historic District at Naval Station Great Lakes, Ill.
| Oct 12, 2010
Full Steam Ahead for Sustainable Power Plant
An innovative restoration turns a historic but inoperable coal-burning steam plant into a modern, energy-efficient marvel at Duke University.
