Business Incubator aims to nurture high-tech companies
The design of the University of Missouri’s new Life Science Business Incubator, including a dramatic elliptical shape and shared workspace, seeks to bridge the university and business worlds, emphasizing high-tech development while promoting collaboration.
The incubator, a cooperative effort between University of Missouri and the Missouri Innovation Center, is focused on nurturing future high-tech, high-growth companies, said Jake Halliday, chief executive officer for the Missouri Innovation Center.
The idea for business incubators sprung from the notion that bringing experienced business mentors in to help start-up companies while allowing them to share their experiences with one another would allow companies to avoid foreseeable mistakes.
The MU incubator’s swooping 33,000 square-foot facility aims to promote such cooperation between the building’s tenants.
“A big part of the space utilization is to create collaborative space,” Halliday said of the building’s design. “There is a great deal of value created by human collaboration.”
The main entrance hall greets guests with a light and airy feel as the ceiling and windows soar above the visitor’s head and curved walls come to a point at each end of the room.
Offices and shared meeting rooms shoot off to the sides of the entrance hall. Areas where people can sit and discuss will form a hub of activity in the main lobby and shared spaces, Halliday said.
“It provides them an opportunity and an area in which they can have open discussions in a casual but focused environment,” said Heiddi Davis of the lobby’s design.
Davis, who was a project manager for Campus Facilities-Planning, Design and Construction, worked closely on the architectural aspects of the building with the architects from Cannon Design.
Companies will lease their workspace in the tenant section, but use the shared spaces to meet with visitors and potential investors. The complex houses several such shared spaces, including shared board and group meeting rooms and kitchen space.
Three kinds of rooms, each with a different and specific function, dominate the tenant space: wet-labs, dry-labs and open office environments.
There, too, steps have been taken to promote a positive work environment.
In the labs and workspace hall, orange walls warm up the rooms, serving as contrast to generally stark lab equipment.
Although the hall leading to tenant space is linear, the curved theme continues as light bends down curved shafts into the hall from second-story openings.
The windows letting that light in, called clearstory windows, were “an attempt to break up the monotony of a very long corridor and to provide a variety of space in what could have been a very unfriendly environment,” Davis said. The design keeps people from feeling closed in, she said.
While the lab spaces will likely be assigned to individual companies, the building’s two open office environments will house multiple ventures. Businesses will work in pods in the open office environment, the idea being that businesses sharing the office space can work with one another, sharing ideas for the betterment of all, Halliday said.
Although not LEED-certified, Halliday said great efforts have been made to make the incubator environmentally friendly. All furniture fabrics are made from recycled materials; the woods used are environmentally acceptable; the main lobby floors are cork.
Further environmental initiatives include using the campus steam and chilled water system to provide the heating and cooling and using flourescent lights equipped with occupancy sensors. Of the 33,000 square feet available, only 20,000 square feet has so far been set aside for the exclusive use of tenants. An additional 40,000 square feet of tenant space is planned for 2012.
The building has so far cost about $9.5 million, with funds coming equally from the University, the federal government and the private sector. When complete, the building will be owned by MU and operated by the Missouri Innovation Center.