Building 50, also known as the Louis Stokes Laboratories, is a six-story facility built in 2001 and designed specifically around the needs of the NIH intramural research community. The institutes that conduct research in Building 50 include the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). The building has research “neighborhoods,” or open-plan modules, that allow workstations to be in direct proximity to lab benches and next to exterior windows for maximum exposure to natural light.
The facility has won awards for its energy-efficient design and reflects a strong commitment to the energy-efficiency goals of the Laboratories for the 21st Century program, a joint endeavor of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). As part of its approach to energy efficiency, Building 50 incorporates the use of daylighting, variable-air-volume (VAV) control of the ventilation air supply and exhaust, and energy recovery from the exhaust air stream. The building also employs a modified interstitial space that contains all utilities, allowing the building to accommodate change, now and in the future.
