These research laboratories are positioned to attract top talent

In other words, bustling urban areas that offer entertainment, dining, and shopping in addition to housing and employment options are real attractors, particularly in an industry that relies on in-person work. Unlike office buildings, where teams from different companies rarely mingle, tenants in an R&D building—even one hosting many different commercial enterprises—tend to seek each other out, collaborate, and create a community. 

Here are four lab buildings that offer cutting-edge, flexibly designed research facilities in addition to connections to the broader community and a lively mix of services and activities at the workplace and beyond.  

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Kendall Square Initiative has community engagement in its DNA. From its inception, stakeholders wanted to create an appealing and multifaceted environment for everyone to live, work, play, and visit. “We always wanted Kendall Square to be active during the day, the evenings, and on the weekends,” says Maureen McCaffrey, director at MIT Investment Management Company. “Ground floor activation makes Kendall Square feel like a complete neighborhood for the entire community.” With retail, green space, housing, and convenient access to public transit, the development is a vibrant complement to the cutting-edge work that’s happening in the labs. 

Researchers often work as clinicians, too, and they want to work at institutions where their labs are in close proximity to their patients in hospitals and clinics. At the new Simpson Querrey Biomedical Research Center on Northwestern University’s medical campus in downtown Chicago, a bridge connects labs to the previously existing hospital to support researchers who have co-appointments between the two facilities. “It’s important for the research enterprise to have physical connections to the medical school,” says Jay Baehr, senior project manager at Northwestern University. “Interlacing the buildings supports research at a mass scale and makes it easier for people to communicate and share resources.” The building also helps extend knowledge to the broader community: A street-level auditorium hosts public lectures and other events.

Element Labs, a multistory lab in Madison, Wisconsin, will house flexibly designed, state-of-the-art research space along with a ground-level restaurant, a multi-function event hall, underground parking, and green space and water features. The developers intend for the project to transform an existing suburban research park, already one of the city’s most vital economic engines, into a bustling and vital urban district. “Going forward, we’re trying to do somewhat denser buildings so we have a dynamic frame for the public realm,” says Paul Muench, associate director of University Research Park. “Element Labs’ architectural and lab quality will establish a standard for upcoming phases of development at University Research Park.”

Innolabs, a life science building in Long Island City (a neighborhood in New York City’s Queens borough), is an adaptive reuse project with proximity to transit and a unique look and feel. By breathing new life into an existing structure, labs like this help maintain a neighborhood’s character, reduce the need for new construction materials, and, because older buildings in established downtowns are often convenient to public transportation, help tenants reduce their carbon footprint. Innolabs also features a ground-level assembly space that can be opened to the life sciences community for programs and events. It all adds up to an appealing workplace in a profession that requires in-person effort: “Working in a lab is not something that you can do from home,” says Ed Jaram, senior director at King Street Properties. “And these companies need scientists who are very smart, very skilled, and who can take their pick of a wide range of firms.”