Beckman Design Achieved Distinction While Encouraging Collaboration
By Steve McGaughey, Beckman Institute Writer
Award-winning Beckman Institute Building Continues to Serve as a Model
Their challenge was not a simple one: design a building with a distinctive exterior and an interior with the kind of functionality that encouraged the ideals of teamwork. And, oh by the way, it had to fit in with a campus master plan, complement the architecture of other campus buildings, and, last but not least, be ready in three years.
The firm that was chosen to do the architectural design work for the Beckman Institute building back in December of 1985 managed, with input from University of Illinois officials and faculty, to meet all of the criteria stipulated above, creating a facility that remains as beautiful and true to its original purpose as when it officially opened in 1989.
From its distinctive tower facing south toward campus, to the beautiful emerald glass accentuating every side, to a floor plan that encourages collaboration, the Beckman Institute building has remained as vital after two decades as the research that takes place inside its walls.
When Arnold and Mabel Beckman donated $40M to build an interdisciplinary research center on campus in late 1985, Arnold gave University officials a three-year timetable to turn their megagift into a premier facility for doing science. Occupation of the building did indeed begin in 1988, meeting Arnold’s timetable but going beyond expectations as far as its design.
The Beckman Institute building was designed with the prevailing architecture on the University of Illinois campus in mind. The architect’s design also included a vision that melded the concept of interdisciplinary collaboration that would take place in the facility with a distinctive look for housing those scientific efforts.
The architectural firm of Smith, Hinchman & Grylls (SH&G, now known as SmithGroup) was chosen over several nationally-known competitors to design the building. Andrew Vazzano was named as the firm’s principal planner for the Beckman Institute project, with architect Ralph Youngren chosen to lead the firm’s design team. The competition for the contract came down to a final proposal to the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, with the SH&G team led by Youngren competing against a team from a firm in Houston, which was also led by a top-flight architect.
“Both individuals were well-published in the field for design excellence; both teams approached the selection very competitively, with high emotion and creativity,” Vazzano said of the effort to land the lucrative contract. “From the outset, it was apparent to us that this was a special project, a unique program of interdisciplinary research under a new institute model. SmithGroup selected a top team from several of our practice groups to match the spirit of the interdisciplinary approach.”
Landing the Beckman Institute project was a coup, even for a firm as well-known as SmithGroup.
“The Beckman Institute was a major commission for SmithGroup,” Vazzano said. “The program was unique because it had a varied range of bioscience, computer (science), engineering, chemistry, and information technology disciplines in one facility. SmithGroup had recently completed major advanced technology research centers for General Electric, Eli Lilly, Owens Corning, and the CIA, as well as major universities, but this project was combining all of these technologies under one roof.”
Vazzano said the incorporation of numerous, varied disciplines in one building, with faculty who were expected to collaborate with one another in future, as-yet-unknown projects, was a major hurdle for the designers. Not only were the research projects unknown, but the researchers who would inhabit the new building had not been chosen when the design process began.
“The concept was to develop a flexible lab plan that could accommodate a wide range of user disciplines that may change over time simply and cost effectively,” Vazzano said. “Starting the first day of the project, we conducted interviews with representative faculty from various departments on campus. All were asked, ‘If you were to go into the Beckman what would you need?’ These needs were presented to the steering committee who guided the input purely based on the envisioned concept of the Institute.”
In order to fashion the Beckman Institute building we have today, Youngren had the firm’s design team take pictures of architectural elements on campus such as entryways, facades, and roofs. They also collected images of international research facilities that had recently been built.
“All the images were shown to the Trustees to create the vision of what could be distinctive, collaborative, timeless, and contextual,” Vazzano said.
Beckman Institute Founding director Ted Brown has written that because of their presentation, the decision to hire SH&G was a quick and easy one; also, because the building was financed almost entirely with private funds, it was possible to deviate from normal University procedures for large building projects. All of which led to meeting Arnold Beckman’s timeline.
“This project, driven by Dr. Beckman’s requirement to walk into the facility in three years, was on an accelerated schedule,” Vazzano said. “Program planning and design, including much of the construction drawings, were produced in a year.
“The normal Capital Development Board and University review processes were waived to expedite this schedule. Reviews were held in the SmithGroup offices to garner real-time review of developing concepts. Additionally, it was the first time the University hired a construction manager, Turner Construction, to join the team in the design phase.”
Vazzano said Youngren’s team researched the original master plan of the University, which had envisioned a four mile axis from the northern end of campus, through the Illini Union building near the campus’ midsection, to Assembly Hall on the south end.
“He proposed the Beckman Institute line up on that axis, which moved the proposed tower in line with the other facilities,” Vazzano said.
Land was cleared and buildings moved from the site chosen for the facility, which runs along University Avenue almost the entire length of the block between Mathews and Wright streets. Ground was broken in 1986.
When it came to designing the exterior of the building, several unique touches helped produce a look that would prove distinctive yet blend in with traditional Illinois campus facilities.
“Under Ralph’s leadership, the design team used elements of the campus brick patterns, round roofs, entry porticos, and tall towers to provide context with the rich Georgian heritage of Urbana, but fused it with a contemporary vocabulary of elements of glass curtain-wall stair towers, and green glass bridges,” Vazzano said.
The unique design elements included flourishes such as copper roofs, a Flemish bond pattern for the brickwork – complemented by limestone – on the façade, and emerald green glass that serves to highlight everything from the prominent tower on the south end to the building’s wings on the east and west ends.
Inside, the thinking was all about the interdisciplinary ideal of encouraging collaborations between researchers from different departments. Openness and interaction were the goals of designers and University officials like Brown and his fellow steering committee members who drew up the proposal to the Beckmans.
Toward that end, a vaulted atrium in the center of the interior – joining together the southern office wing to the northern wing that houses laboratories – was a featured element of the design. So, too, were bridges on the second, third, and fourth floors that connect the two wings and include spaces for informal gatherings between researchers.
There were many challenges for the designers. In the mid-1980s the computer age was just beginning to dawn but everyone from faculty to campus officials to the designers knew that any modern research center was going to require advanced computer technology and support. Networking closets for servers and access spaces for cables and wiring were included, along with spaces for the more traditional wet and dry labs.
Vazzano said the most difficult design task they faced was in accommodating the changes that naturally come with doing science.
“The biggest challenge was planning and designing a facility that would function for so many technologies and changes that would inevitably occur over time,” he said. “The most satisfying aspect of the project is that the facility is true to its mission of a highly collaborative environment for science that has successfully endured twenty years of technological changes in programs and equipment.”
At the groundbreaking ceremony in October of 1986, Arnold and Mabel Beckman, then-Illinois governor James Thompson, and University officials were all present. Brown and a few other early Beckman Institute staff members began moving in while construction was still ongoing in 1988. Faculty and more staff started occupying the building in early 1989, with a formal opening taking place in April of that year.
The Beckman building features more than 313,000 square feet of laboratories, meeting rooms, offices, and support facilities. Today, around 600 faculty and student researchers from more than 30 departments on campus work at Beckman, along with more than 100 support staff members. Both the building – thanks in large part to Arnold’s insistence on maintenance and operations funding from the state – and the research that goes on here continue to shine after 20 years.
In 1990 the then year-old Beckman Institute won the coveted Laboratory of the Year Award from R&D Magazine.
In an editorial, the magazine had this to say about Beckman and its design: “R&D Magazine’s 1990 Laboratory of the Year, the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, was one of the first interdisciplinary-by-design research labs to force its researchers to cross paths during their normal daily activities in an effort to get them to talk to each other. Its flexibility and focus on interdisciplinary research continues to make the Beckman Institute an academic attraction and a standout center of advanced research on its campus.”
SmithGroup and Vazzano are still intimately involved with the Beckman Institute. The SmithGroup Lecture series annually brings nationally-known scientists to campus for talks at Beckman, while the building is one of the firm’s proudest accomplishments.
“This project was a leading-edge facility which had envisioned the future of research as a true interdisciplinary collaborative environment for science,” Vazzano said. “From this project, which became the 1990 Lab-of-the-Year, we have received numerous commissions in interdisciplinary research projects.
“As we look back at our professional careers, it was a rewarding experience which challenged the team,” Vazzano added. “It was designed in a spirit of collaboration and innovation with several outstanding individuals at the University of Illinois who truly gave it the vision it enjoys today. It is exciting to come back each year and talk to the current research teams that are just as proud to work in the Beckman Institute as the original individuals who conceived the facility as their home.”