Today's laboratories are often very complex projects with sophisticated technical demands and regulatory constraints. How can these demands be balanced while still achieving high sustainable performance? Using the new radiological Materials Design Laboratory at Argonne National Laboratory as an example, Argonne's Michael P. Finder and Dirk von Below of Flad Architects will present a process of pushing the limits and selecting appropriate measures that reduce resource consumption to create a highly productive environment.

The owner's project team, together with the designers and engineers, approached challenging federal project requirements in a robust, integrated team that focused on strategic initiatives involving climate awareness in design, optimized systems design, campus integration, user behavior, and measurement and verification. Through these efforts, the project met requirements such as LEED Gold certification and exceeded others, including a design nearly 40 percent more efficient than ASHRAE 90.1.