Science and Engineering Research and Classroom Complex

While the exterior was completed in 2005, interior build out and full occupancy will not take place until May 2008. The complex will accommodate 374 people, of which approximately 274 will be graduate students, 48 will be faculty members, and the remainder will be post-doctoral fellows, research scientists, and support staff.

The concept of constructing a building for the science and engineering colleges necessitated a delicate design balance to create a collaborative faculty environment, to separate classrooms from research labs, to satisfy the space requirements of the two departments, and to meet construction codes.

Topping the University’s wish list of what the SERCC can achieve are an open-concept research space, secure labs, high-tech classroom space, and faculty-student access.

The SERCC design requisites call for the building to be flexible and to provide a collaborative faculty environment with adaptable space allocations. Flexibility is achieved by having infrastructure for as many as 80 fume hoods per floor with variable exhaust techniques, providing proper shielding from nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) equipment by installing soft iron in the affected floors and ceilings, and isolating vibrations that could disturb sensitive lasers and other instruments.

Faculty offices will be openly accessible from the elevators with unsecured entry, while the labs will require card access. The open-lab concept will be achieved by providing a common linear equipment room (LER)—a 12-foot wide room running the length of the building—with labs on both sides. The LER will provide space for common items, such as small bench-top equipment and ice machines. Common general lab areas will be located on each floor for common use equipment and services, including cold rooms, dishwashing facilities, x-ray and gas chromatography, and NMR equipment.

The complex comprises a total of 170,000 sf with 130,000 sf for research space and the remainder for lecture halls and classrooms. The $55-million complex consists of one building with three science floors dedicated to synthetic chemistry, biochemistry, and biotechnology, as well as two engineering floors for materials engineering and biomedical engineering. Classrooms are located in a nearby building connected to a red brick drum structure housing a 500-seat auditorium.

The finished product is a beautiful complex, complete with useful classrooms and plenty of space for interaction, awaiting the final interior build-out and occupancy. The first floor of the research facility is designated for the cleanroom with wet, dry, and laser labs. The second floor may be used for bio-medical engineering, the third may contain a BSL-3 facility for bio-medical engineering, the fourth will be utilized for bio-chemistry and theory/computation, and the fifth will house synthesis wet labs.

Project Information

Building Owner:

University of Houston

Building Location:

Houston, Texas UNITED STATES

Project Type:

New Construction

Principal Building Function:

Bio-nanotechnology research and fabrication

Project Timeline

May 2005	Completion
Last known status: Completed

Construction Cost:

$55,000,000

About These Cost Figures

Building Information

Project Includes:

Biochemistry
Biomedical
Biotechnology
Chemistry
Cleanroom
Education
Engineering
Interdisciplinary Research
Laboratory
Research

Total GSF:

170,000

Project Team

Architect

Cesar Pelli & Associates, Inc.

Builder

Vaughn Construction

Profile Created 01/10/2007

Last Updated 10/12/2007

About the Reported Cost Figures

The cost figures reported are supplied by the firms that submitted these projects for publication, which in most cases are the designers or builders. Whereas these sources are intimately familiar with their projects, they may not be fully aware of the owners' finally-realized and recorded costs. In some cases, costs are truly and completely accounted for, and in others they represent a near approximation of the final costs. Costs have not been adjusted for year of construction, nor has any attempt been made to make regional cost adjustments.

Further, costs are not comparable on any kind of detailed standard costing model. Hence, it is possible for the cost of one building to include a steam boiler, while the cost of a comparable building might not include the boiler, if steam is being supplied from an already existing campus grid. Or, in another case, a building might include excess boiler capacity to supply steam to another building. Some submittals include fees or unusual site improvements as part of the construction costs, which others do not.

Fig. 1

Exterior