Industry News

Washington University broke ground in early October 2000 on the university's Uncas A. Whitaker Hall for Biomedical Engineering building, designed by Boston-based architects Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott. The new three-story facility will include a flexible laboratory wing comprised of 22,000 sf of wet lab space and 12,500 sf of procedure equipment and environmental areas (which will include a nanofabrication lab, vivarium, electron microscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance suites). A three-story atrium will connect the laboratory wing with faculty office pods and classrooms.

Boston College's Higgins Hall is undergoing renovation and expansion that began in 1998. The original 77,000-sf facility will be expanded by 42,000 sf during the three-year, $80 million modernization which is designed to enhance collaborative and project-based learning. Higgins Hall houses the college's biology and physics departments.

Vista Community College will consolidate several locations at a new $35 million campus to be built on a half-block site near Berkeley's downtown Bay Area Rapid Transit station. Ratcliff Associates, based in Emeryville, Calif., has begun the design for the 160,000-sf building which will accommodate the college's 5,000 students.

Hamilton College has selected the Boston-based Einhorn Yaffee Prescott, Architecture & Engineering PC to design a new 180,000-sf unified science building for the campus.

Northeastern University broke ground in October on the new 84,000-sf George D. Behrakis Health Sciences Center, a $37 million health sciences complex designed to promote collaboration among the health professions, nursing, and pharmacy programs. The structure will accommodate classrooms, labs, and clinics for the Bouyé College of Health and Sciences. Completion is planned for summer of 2002.