I would recommend dedicated the entire right side of your base to laboratories and workshops, save for 1 or 2 rooms, which you will need for facilities that get no adjacency bonuses.
You will need to build 6 facilities that get no adjacency bonuses (Officer Training, Alien Containment, Foundry, Psionic Labs and 2 plot facilities which cannot later be removed or moved), and 2 square blocks of 4: 2 Satellite Uplink + 2 Satellite Nexus for a total of 16 satellites (which is exactly the number of satellites you need) + 2 Power Generator + Steam Generator + Elerium Generator to power the whole thing (a base with such a layout will produce 107 power and draw 102 power; you can replace the Thermo Generator with an Elerium generator if no steam block is in a suitable location, allowing you to drop 1 Power Generator and placing one of the non-adjacent facilities there, freeing up a slot in the right wing for another lab/workshop).
As you can see, 6 + 2 * 4 = 14, the number of rooms in one side of your base + 2. The 2 extra facilities will overflow into the right corner of the base, as so:
You can shuffle the blocks around, what's important is that you don't put facilities that get no adjacency bonuses in such a place that it will block bonuses for facilities that do
Should you ever become rich like Scrooge, you can remove 1 Power and 1 Thermo Generators and build a second Elerium Generator, allowing you to move 1 facility that get no adjacency bonuses from the right side to the left side.
Note that the laboratories have been replaced with workshops - by this point you will likely have researched everything there is to research. You may also wish to demolish Alien Containment after interrogating every type of enemy, as doing so will turn surplus live aliens into useful corpses, allowing you to stun aliens for their enemies without sacrificing the body count, as well as free up a slot for a facility that doesn't have adjacency bonuses.
Proof of concept screenshot. Note my improper placement of plot facility 2 - it should be in a corner. Also note how blocks have been shuffled around to accommodate various demands over the base's lifetime.
Enemy Within addendum
The expansion introduces some new factors, but the situation remains largely unchanged: The Genetics Lab counts as a laboratory and the Cybernetics Lab counts as a workshop for adjacency bonuses, so you can build them as you would build laboratories and workshops above (make sure to fit the Gene lab in a corner if you're going to replace the laboratories with workshops later). The foundry has also been given workshop adjacency bonuses, so you can move it out of the laboratory block to the workshop block for some increased efficiency.
From UFOPaedia:
EXALT always starts its operations at a random date in May, with the possible variation between dates dependent on the game's difficulty level. On Easy/Normal difficulties the day can vary between the 12th and the 24th, while on Classic/Impossible it can start anywhere between the 6th and the 24th.
For reference, the game begins in March, so May is the third in-game month.
Best Answer
Usage, Damage & Effects
The Kinetic Strike does 12 guaranteed damage to an adjacent unit. This can be upgraded to 18 by a Foundry project. Note that only the 4 squares that share sides with the MEC's square are considered adjacent - not diagonal squares. If an enemy is in an adjacent square but the other side of a wall, the attack will punch through the wall to hit them, destroying the wall in the process.
Enemies fly backwards a substantial distance from the force of the punch if they die, and they destroy any cover that they hit. If the target is thrown into another enemy, this does not hurt the second enemy. However, it can destroy their cover, and if the target hits a car or other explosive then they will set it off.
If Kinetic Strike is used to kill a Mechtoid or a Muton Beserker, instead of the usual animation we see our MEC grapple with the enemy briefly, and the enemy may not be thrown backwards. This can cause damage to objects to the side of the target.
Kinetic Strike can also be free-aimed in any of the four grid-aligned directions. This may be useful for destroying cover, or for attacking an enemy that the player knows about but does not have line of sight to. Additionally, a free-aimed punch can destroy the power conduits in the final Slingshot mission (pointless but fun :-)).
Implementation & movement increase
Kinetic Strike has an unlimited number of uses, and no cooldown. It can be used when the main weapon has no ammunition. If the damage increase foundry project has been completed, MECs can use Kinetic Strike twice in one turn instead of moving.
The module appears to increase the distance that a MEC can move on a single action point by 3 squares. Specifically, a level 1 flamethrower-equipped MEC can move 7 squares on its first action, and a level 1 kinetic strike equipped MEC can move 10 squares. This movement increase may sometimes be a more important effect than the punch itself...