Latest Reports

London’s King’s College has tapped building information systems and financial data to maximize the use of space while reducing energy costs and carbon emissions by employing three strategies: leveraging shareable and flexible space, challenging assumptions about the need for individual offices, and having leaders set progressive examples for other staff. Efficiently planned and utilized spaces are inextricably linked with sustainability for growing academic institutions like King’s College, especially when the cost of property is expensive, according to architect and planner Ian Caldwell.

In response to evolving needs and changing research emphases, a major addition to the Institute for Human Performance (IHP) at the State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University expands the research focus beyond human activity and rehabilitation to encompass exploration of disorders of the nervous system, including behavioral disorders, such as ADHD; diseases of the eye; and neurodegenerative diseases, such as ALS, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s.

Using a phased, core-and-shell strategy to construct the 310,000-gsf Life Science Laboratories (LSL) building allowed the University of Massachusetts Amherst to obtain high-level research space and take advantage of the competitive bid market and economic incentives available in 2010. The approach also provided economies of scale and the advantage of postponing programming and occupancy decisions with subsequent fit-outs.

The University of Toronto, Mississauga, re-imagined its first-year biology teaching labs to update the space and encourage a more experiential learning environment that will hook students on biology and engage the entire building in what goes on there. They also need to accommodate classes of as many as 48 students, which their former space could not.

Increasing class sizes, curricular changes, and medical education mandates continue to influence the design of health science and medical education spaces, which means they must address the need for shared areas, systems-based learning and flexibility/adaptability, according to Scott Kelsey, managing principal, and Jonathan Kanda, principal, with CO Architects.