Thoughtfully creating some of the safest places in the world: An interview with Leslie Gartner

Leslie (Les) Gartner has led the planning and design of biocontainment laboratories across five continents and twelve countries with WSP’s Science and Technology team. Learn more about these critically important spaces below.

United States | Tuesday, February 27, 2024
Reading Time : 6 minutes

In terms of laboratory classification, level four is the highest, where the most dangerous infectious domestic animal and human diseases are studied. These facilities provide countries with the ability to diagnose, manage and research infectious diseases safely, elevating humankind’s ability to improve health and sustain our way of life. Below, Les shares about his career in this exciting and ever-evolving field.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has called you THE global expert on high containment labs. What does that mean?

First, it’s quite rewarding to be called an expert by a client. I feel that compliment has been achieved by dedicating my career to designing high containment labs that are both functional and inspire great science.

To become experts, we have dedicated ourselves to learning. With each new client, our team distinguishes the mission, whether it’s diagnostics, research, vaccine development or testing, then applies best practices from our past projects from around the world and across other industries. For us, the mindset is evolution over innovation. There’s zero tolerance for failure in this type of facility; designs can only get better.

Les Gartner

Senior Vice President - Science Design

United States

Contact

The Canadian Science Centre - Les's first level 4 lab project that set the gold standard for
containment design.

How did you get into high containment lab design?

I’ve always loved science. As a young architect, I started in healthcare design, but didn’t gravitate to overall healthcare spaces. Instead, I preferred the scientific interactions of the clinical laboratories, figuring out how to optimize processes with the clinicians and technicians that worked there. Contributing to spaces that helped scientists do their best work was rewarding.

In a lab, every inch of space matters. High containment lab design blends planning and science and is the most complex problem a lab designer can solve. I was eager to take on my first level 4 lab project, the Canadian Science Centre, in 1989, a project that set the gold standard for containment design. The lab opened in 1997 and, 25 years later, the lab is still running exactly as intended and is visited by current clients who want to see our successful work in action.

You create some of the safest places in the world. How do you stay ahead of the needs and requirements in this sector?

This goes back to the evolution over innovation approach. We take what worked on the last lab, consider what’s changed and decide what can we do better, constantly striving for incremental improvements. We think about our prior projects as mockups for the current project, with the intention that this project will set a new standard as the best lab in the world. However, we don’t shun innovation. We often try approaches that have never been done before. We do prototype and test to reach a 100 percent solution before we implement, as human safety is paramount.

For example, take our project with the National Institute of Health at Fort Detrick, Maryland, where they had a clinical-based approach to studying select agents. One of the unique project requirements was placement of imaging equipment inside a high containment lab. To meet that request without compromising the lab’s integrity or going over budget, our team instead developed a polycarbonate tube mounted through the containment barrier that allowed the subject to remain in containment and allowed the imaging equipment to be kept outside of containment. Working closely with the manufacturer, the WSP lab team designed a tube that is solid, durable, unbreakable and contained, while still allowing the precise imaging required to meet the goals of the client. It was a new solution that was rigorously tested, with human safety at its core.

What projects are you working on now? What problems are those spaces going to solve?

We’re currently designing a high containment lab with the CDC in Atlanta to allow Biosafety Level-4 to continue as they look to upgrade one that we originally designed 23 years ago. This lab will add capacity and capabilities that enable the U.S. to diagnose and develop countermeasures for dangerous agents, keeping public health at the forefront.

The WSP team is currently designing a new high containment lab with the CDC in Atlanta.

Les is also working on NASA’s Mars Sample Receiving Facility - a high containment lab that may one day safely hold extraterrestrial agents.

We’re also very excited about NASA’s Mars Sample Receiving Facility. This high containment lab may one day safely hold extraterrestrial agents and provides space to answer a question that has long intrigued the world: is there life outside of our planet? The beauty and challenge of this lab was creating a pristine place to work with samples that is similar to where they found them, thereby protecting the samples, people and the integrity of the science. Earth shall not touch Mars and Mars shall not touch Earth.

What’s the most useful tool in your daily design practice?

The most useful tool in lab planning and design is communication. Listening and advising. When you work with scientists, you must understand what they do so that you can confidently communicate with them on their level. We also need to grasp what’s unique about their work so that we can adapt our approaches and design that next best lab. Once we have that understanding, as global experts, we take our accumulated specialty knowledge and guide them to solutions. We cannot design a successful facility without deep listening and strong communication.

What advice would you give designers interested in this work?

What I’ve learned over my career is that setting goals allows you to design your own career path. Early on, I didn’t love the projects I was on, but I kept advocating for science projects and finally achieved that, then dedicated time to developing an expertise. I’ve been fortunate to find great opportunities for exciting work within WSP and now, as we build the Science and Technology team, I look for designers interested in science, details, communication and complex problem solving. I know these young architects and engineers will move the bar higher as they go, evolving lab design even further.

What do you think makes a place, and where’s your favorite place?

As an architect, I believe that a place is defined by what it does for us. Does it advance humankind in small or large ways? Possibly surprisingly, I think more about the inside than the outside of a building. Places should balance function and technical excellence and above all be driven by the experience of people within—whether that’s a lab, the Opera House in Sydney or a busy downtown office campus.

My favorite place that I’ve designed is Rocky Mountain Labs in Hamilton, Montana, a small town with a big lab. Set among mountains and trees, we designed the facility to integrate into the community and highlight the mountain landscape. Inside, we captured views, leveraged gathering spaces, created critical labs and used the building’s language to separate key components. Years later, I still love to visit that campus.