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Adimab: Bringing timber to biotech

Mass timber meets modern science in an expanded, sustainable New England laboratory.

  

Client

  • Adimab

Architect

  • Sylvia Richards Practice of Architecture; Christopher Smith Architect

Project Status

  • Completed

Awards

  • Wood in Architecture Design Award, 2025

Adimab is a leading provider of biologics discovery and engineering. When they decided to expand their laboratory in New Hampshire, they presented a tricky objective to the design team: create a facility that is both highly sustainable and highly technical.

A timber structure met the first criteria but posed challenges in terms of systems distribution and vibration — both critical factors within laboratories. The life sciences sector has been slow to adopt mass timber for these reasons, but Adimab wanted to explore the option.

Key to achieving an earth-friendly, science-ready expansion? Assembling a team with a deep understanding of vibration performance and mass timber structural systems. With our design-build partner, Bensonwood, we were brought on as mass timber engineers, a role that grew to engineer of record as the project progressed.

Square Feet
28,000
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Good vibrations

Adimab’s 28,000-square-foot, three-story lateral expansion introduces new lab space, open offices and meeting rooms that bring people together around research and engineering. But in a space full of high-tech equipment, even footsteps can create vibrations that disrupt important scientific work.

Understanding the vibration requirements of the client’s equipment was key and required close collaboration with a knowledgeable vibration consultant that understood the lab equipment. Once performance criteria and suitability were determined by the consultant, our team was able to move forward with the carbon-sequestering mass timber solution. This included a structural diaphragm made of cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels. An acoustic mat and cementitious topping slab over the CLT that is supported on glulam beams, columns and CLT walls also helped mitigate vibration throughout the facility.

Final vibration analysis confirmed that the timber structure also achieved the requirements of the client’s laboratory equipment, an outcome made possible through nuanced design decisions like a column grid layout that prioritized efficient spans for glulam beams and more direct load paths to the ground.

The innovative success of this building is due in no small part to the creativity of the structural engineering team. They seamlessly understood the design goals and found elegant structural solutions to integrate complex mechanical systems within an open, mass-timber structure. The result is a state-of-the-art, serene, precision-crafted laboratory building.
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Support systems

Another critical component of biologics labs are the systems: power, ventilation, gas, water and fire suppression can all come into play, and at capacities greater than a typical office building.
While the project had lab-standard floor-to-floor heights, the high demands for systems distribution throughout the facility would have conflicted with the architectural goals of clean ceiling lines if a traditional construction approach was utilized.

Instead, the two-way spanning capabilities of CLT were leveraged to create a pathway of beam-free systems distribution corridors throughout the building. With the selected framing layouts, most elements of the mechanical, electrical and plumbing system have an unobstructed pathway through the building, reducing the need for coordinated beam and wall penetrations while also freeing up more height and creating a better user experience within the space.

These goals were achieved through early design decisions about framing layouts, coordinated across the team to simultaneously meet architectural and structural requirements while facilitating the desired erection sequencing.

Other challenges that we have overcome