Setting the Context
Historic Johnson Hall, along with its sister building, Mary Gates Hall, frames Rainier Vista, the "most sacred space" on the University of Washington Campus (Norman Johnston FAIA, Professor Emeritus with the UW College of Architecture and Urban Design). Designed by the John Graham Company, and constructed in 1930, the 121,000 square foot building has served as home to the School of Arts and Sciences' Department of Geology, now the Department of Earth and Space Sciences (E&SS).

By the 1990's, the original state-of-the-art teaching and research laboratory facility had become woefully outdated. As with most university campuses across the country with a core stock of historic structures, the building's shell and core, had fallen significantly out of compliance with current codes, (particularly seismic and life safety codes); and its collegiate-gothic brick masonry and cast stone exterior had deteriorated due to years of minimal maintenance. In fact, the University of Washington has defined 15 historic buildings in severe need of renovation and restoration on its campus.

The key challenge of the project was two-fold: to insert a highly technical program of modern teaching and research laboratories into an aged, outdated, yet notable historic building, while sensitively updating the building envelope and infrastructure; and to develop an approach to design and construction that could be applied to the other noted historic buildings in a consistent, cost-effective and programmatically responsive manner.

Challenges / Opportunities / Solutions:
There were several major challenges, opportunities and unique successes that have benefited the University as well as contributed to the general "science of restoration". These included disciplining the schedule and budget, development of prototypical renovation approaches, "listening" to the building, and use of techniques for acceleration and coordination of the work. This is one of those stories.

Listening to the Building - A Dialogue with the Program
As the Programming process got under way, the building's users (the Departments of Earth and Space Sciences, a related component of the Department of Biology, the Quarternary Research Center, and the UW Classroom Support Services), made clear that the ways in which their existing spaces fit within the existing Johnson Hall did not meet their needs for contemporary research and teaching laboratories. In addition, the faculty characterized the building as socially inadequate, unable to respond to the collaborative nature of contemporary teaching and research. As the users and consultant team hammered out the specifics of the final program, they also generated goals for the Conceptual Design phase. Of these, two major goals established an over-arching framework against which planning and design decisions could be evaluated: 1) the building must be modular and flexible to support the changing nature of contemporary research, and 2) the building design must encourage the collegiality that collaborative interaction requires.

As the design process began, it quickly became apparent that in addition to the design team, the users, the program and the goals, there was another participant in the process - Johnson Hall itself. Early analysis quickly revealed that Johnson Hall contained much more than 121,000 square feet. It spoke with a language and vocabulary. It projected a strong personality into the process. It could be cranky and hard to deal with, but also generous and rewarding. We learned that to be successful we were going to have to listen carefully to what Johnson Hall had to say. We consciously modified our approach.

We began with four abstract diagrams (Fig. 4) that illustrated the generic ways in which laboratories could work and the varying degrees of flexibility and collegiality of each. Before concluding which approach or combination to take, however, we applied each to the existing building framework and listened to what Johnson Hall had to say.

We learned that labs would be comfortable in some areas but impossible in others, that the L shape of the building would decide some adjacencies for us (whether we liked it or not), but that the existing "breathing wall" fume hood exhaust shafts allowed for perfect shear wall locations. In areas where old and new lab standards conflicted (former module 12'-6", current module 10'-6") we developed a strategy for accommodating the differences rather than trying to modify one or the other. We observed that existing rock storage bins in hallways effectively narrowed some circulation from 10' to 8' wide - but that 8' was acceptable and practical. Subsequently adopting an 8' wide circulation standard for the design added assignable square feet and solved infrastructure distribution needs. In some places where the building surprised us with column-free space we modified our program to include larger than planned for classroom space, a bonus for undergraduate teaching.

With regard to the site, we had noted that an existing courtyard entrance was at the same elevation as existing grade on the opposite side of the building - where no access to the building was available. With only a modest adaptation of a pair of windows to a pair of doors we provided needed ADA access to the building from a significant quadrant of the campus as well as convenient circulation from one side of the building to the other.

However, it is the building's exterior that exhibits its relevant historic features, the collegiate-Gothic brick masonry and cast stone facades capped with a steeply sloped, slate-covered, apparent single gabled roof. Our listening to the building discovered that to create the wonderfully pleasing stately proportions of the structure, the building contains an unusually high attic space, and an illusory single gable formed by two parallel, steeply sloped gables with an intervening large "valley." This was fortuitous, enabling the design team to tuck into the building and within the roof valley the immense mechanical ductwork, highly specialized perchloric and hydrofluoric fume hood stacks, and 27 different technical systems to optimize space utilization in the modular labs without hanging unsightly ductwork off the side of the building, compromising its historic qualities.

By using this approach of carefully listening to the building, we encountered only a few locations where we had to modify the building to fit the program; we saved significant costs; and we enhanced the existing character of the building.

Listening to our Customers -
Using the University as a Laboratory
Working at the University of Washington suggested a design process particularly suited to the Johnson Hall renovation project. Our customers were laboratory researchers, used to positing hypotheses and then testing them against standards or comparables. We needed to help them make decisions that would keep the project moving forward while at the same time providing them with the reassurance that, in this unfamiliar world of construction, they were making the right choices. Our approach was to use the University of Washington campus and buildings as our laboratory, creating proposed solutions and then testing them against "real world" comparable situations on campus. Although evolved from laboratory researchers, we felt the approach could be applied to the other historic buildings needing renovation.

Early in the planning process there had been debate about the proper size for graduate assistant offices. Since there were a large number of them, the aggregate area had a significant impact on the design. We surveyed graduate assistant offices, both in Johnson Hall and in other science buildings on the campus, created comparisons in plans and photographs, identified the pros and cons of each layout and recommended a reduction of square feet from 70 to 60. We saved space but at the same time reassured the faculty that 60 square feet was acceptable as a standard (and larger than some examples seen).

There had been concern that the lecture halls and classrooms in the building would be suitable for both general campus use as well as for specialized use by E&SS faculty. We scheduled a walking tour of campus lecture facilities, looking at layouts, podiums, colors and finishes and size. From this we developed recommendations about which the faculty could feel confident.

Achieving a proper balance of function, appearance and durability for elevator finishes challenged all members of the team. Fortunately, the UW campus provides a terrific laboratory of elevator choices, from lecture halls (Kane) to libraries (Suzallo) to laboratory buildings (Fisheries). For this research we looked at 8 elevators around campus and then created a format that included a photograph of each elevator and an evaluation in a pros and cons layout. We included our preliminary elevator design as one of the examples. This approach permitted us to reconcile the various criteria, modify our preliminary design in a knowledgeable way, and present the results in a convincing manner.

The opportunity to create a new entrance to the building also posed a problem. Johnson Hall, while not on the historic register, is clearly an historic building based on its age, as a notable work of its architect, its distinctive collegiate gothic design, and its significant presence on the UW campus. Converting a pair of windows into a pair of doors required that the campus architectural review committee approve the manner in which the change was happening. In this case, the design team documented the various other exterior doors in the building as well as doors that had been added or refurbished in Mary Gates Hall, an approximately matching building directly across Rainier Vista. This study revealed that there were a variety of approaches to shape, scale and use of glass in the doors of the two buildings. Within the parameters of these various approaches, the team developed several designs from which a successful recommendation (Fig. 3) was made. A combination of photo and drawing analysis made the issues clear to the committee.

The client and design worked closely together to creatively adapt the lab-heavy program to the structure by listening to what the innate building offered. Tucking the mechanical ductwork and laboratory systems within the attic space required close coordination between structural, mechanical, electrical, and laboratory consultants to locate systems down to the inch. Uniquely, a mechanical systems shop drawing firm was hired by the contractor during design to effectively develop three-dimensioned shop drawings to locate and resolve systems interferences. In addition, the design team developed visual impact diagrams to define the "view shadow" envelope for roof-top mechanical systems to minimize their visibility above the peak of the historic gabled roof.

As the Johnson Hall renovation nears construction completion, the design team takes a number of things away from the process that will prove useful in the future, for both us and other clients. For us, when doing a renovation, we will begin our analysis of the existing building with an appreciation of the character and language that the construction offers. We understand now that the issue is both to modify the building to accommodate the program and to learn what opportunities the building is offering. This requires more than a casual assessment of the existing layout. It demands an appreciation for the nature of the building and the ways in which its historic character can inform the future renovation. For the benefit of both the users and ourselves, we will pay attention to the way in which our clients create and organize information in order to make decisions; and we will modify our way of working accordingly. This requires that we move beyond the normal collection of facts and figures documented in the program to an appreciation of how the users see and understand their world. And it necessitates our willingness to modify our normal ways of working to assure that our clients can appreciate our architecture in their own terms.