Spotlight: The Next Step in Corporate Sustainability

Embodied carbon reduction strategies helped guide the design of Edwards Lifesciences’ Mussallem Innovation Center, a mix of laboratory, office and collaborative spaces designed to improve the daily experience for scientists working on lifesaving technologies.

For 12 years, LPA and Edwards Lifesciences (ELS) have been collaborating on the expansion of the medical technology company’s 42-acre campus in Irvine, California, designing each element around evolving sustainability strategies and ELS’ mission to spark innovation and scientific exploration. The most recent phase, opened in spring 2024, is anchored by the Mussallem Innovation Center, a three-story office and laboratory building that reflects the next steps in the principles that have guided the campus’s redevelopment from the start.

The 118,600-square-foot facility is a new hub for research on the campus, a working building designed to create community and facilitate creativity for the global leader in medical innovations for structural heart disease. Building on the themes found throughout the campus, laboratory, office and social spaces are designed to encourage dialogue, collaboration and “collisions.” At the same time, the complex puts the company’s work and culture on display for colleagues and guests, a living symbol of its past, present and future.

“Many of the lessons we’ve learned from earlier projects on the campus were implemented in the new innovation center, just on a bigger scale,” said LPA President and Chief Design Officer Keith Hempel, who has been working on the campus since 2012.

Like previous projects on the campus, the Mussallem Innovation Center was designed around broad sustainability concepts, including performance, community, wellness and experience. A high-performance envelope, efficient HVAC systems and optimized daylight and shading maximize the building’s energy efficiency; rooftop photovoltaics help reduce operational carbon emissions by 68% from the industry baseline, despite the labs’ high-energy requirements.

For the first time on the Edwards campus, embodied carbon reduction goals were added to the design discussions. Whole-building life cycle modeling was incorporated early in the process for the center, which is designed for a 100-year lifespan and eventual disassembly.

“We’ve been building the sustainable narrative throughout the campus expansion, starting with our first parking structure,” Hempel says. “This is the first building on the campus to really take a close look at embodied carbon.”

The most visible result of that effort is the 50-foot-tall, 152-foot-wide mass timber “front porch” with tall glulam columns and a cross-laminated timber roof diaphragm, the first mass timber structure approved in the City of Irvine. The construction reduces the project’s carbon footprint and creates an iconic welcoming entrance for the center. The tall timber is also homage to the small Oregon cabin where founder Miles Lowell Edwards developed his first heart valve prototype.

A long pine-tree-lined promenade connects the Innovation Center with the existing campus and a pavilion dedicated to Mr. Edwards’ work and legacy. The mass timber structural frame and the façade’s glazing reflect the pine trees and pavilion, linking the building to the elements of the Pacific Northwest. Exterior decks with broad campus views help blend the exterior and interior spaces and make the building feel like a piece that perfectly fits into the larger puzzle, while making a break from the surrounding campus architecture.

Connections to the Past, Present and Future

LPA and ELS have collaborated on over 30 significant projects across the Irvine campus, ranging from a 1,200-stall parking garage that featured one of the largest green walls in North America to the more recent 10-acre, 470,000-square-foot campus expansion with a net-zero-energy, LEED Platinum entry pavilion. Each step, including the Innovation Center, was designed through LPA’s integrated process, which brings together architects, engineers, interior designers and landscape architects from the start of the process.

“LPA’s integrated design process was essential to create a cohesive, comprehensive strategy that established and helped to achieve all our performance goals,” says Tom Porter, senior vice president of corporate services for Edwards Lifesciences. “Everyone was at the table sharing ideas and working through the issues.”

Like other buildings on the campus, the Innovation Center was designed for efficiency, resiliency and the ability to serve multiple roles. It is home to a company Center of Excellence, an important touchpoint for the scientific culture. Three floors are split between office and lab space, with both intentionally intermingled on the second floor.

Every social and collaborative space has its own personality, from cozy areas near windows to working collaborative environments. Lab and office workers share social and collaborative spaces; all the building functions are integrated and shared. Every opportunity is found to link the exterior and indoor spaces, creating a bright, open work environment for the scientists and staff.

“Lab workers are using the same social spaces on a daily basis as the office workers,” says LPA Design Director Rick D’Amato. “These spaces don’t simply encourage interaction; they demand and celebrate it.”

Unlike many traditional research facilities, lab spaces are brought to life with color, lighting and graphics.

“From a design perspective, the areas around the lab are as aesthetically important as the rest of the spaces in the facility, as well as being an important extension of the Edwards brand,” D’Amato says.

Throughout the building, columns and structural elements are left exposed, reducing the materials and connecting the interior spaces to the building’s structural and embodied carbon story.

Adding Embodied Carbon to the Mix

As part of the embodied carbon analysis, a wide variety of structural systems were analyzed and modeled, including constructing the building entirely of mass timber. Each option was weighed with Edwards Lifesciences leaders’ short- and long-term plans for the building. Teams worked directly with the company’s Environment, Health and Safety team, which oversees the organization’s carbon footprint, to develop a clearer picture of the project’s overall carbon impact.

Ultimately designers settled on a hybrid building, with the mass timber front porch paired with a more conventional concrete tilt-up and steel structural system. Concrete in the floors, foundation and tilt-up panels uses fly ash and Portland limestone cement to cut embodied carbon by 15% compared with the industry average. Overall, the design reduced embodied carbon in the structural system by 8% from industry benchmarks.

The availability of materials played a key role in the decision-making process. Transportation costs — and the related carbon emissions — were also a factor. “We cannot do one size fits all,” says LPA Director of Structural Engineering Daniel Wang. “Sourcing is very regional, and some regions may not have the materials available.”

The laboratory spaces needed to meet a much higher level of performance, including strict vibration standards. LPA engineers used a “heat map” strategy on each floor, a targeted approach that strengthened only the areas needed to meet the stricter lab requirements. “We were looking for alternatives to adding more material, which lowered the carbon footprint and saved our client money,” Wang says.

The Spirit of Innovation

The spirit of innovation was evident at every step of the process. The collaborative design process focused on the center’s larger role, as well as its impact on the daily lives of the people who use it every day. The facility connects the new and the old, from state-of-the-art research labs and embodied carbon strategies to the reflection of one man’s research in an Oregon cabin.

“We went through a design process where we talked to everyone involved about the story we wanted to tell,” Hempel says. “Where we landed was harking back to where everything started.”